Using AI as a Competitive Differentiator

‘The chatbot will look it up, convert it to your language and then give you an answer.’

Customers conduct about 500 conversations with the chatbot monthly, with about 40% of those resulting in a service ticket being opened after the chatbot was not able to troubleshoot the problem, Saurer noted. “You might say, well, the chatbot solves 60% of 500, but I don’t think that’s 100% right because we have some people who drop off because they’re not happy with the conversation.”

Nonetheless, he said the number of users has remained steady, and if the chatbot was not functioning properly, the number would go down after a few months. “The return rate is also quite good. We think early indicators are that the bot is doing its job as we want.”

By better serving its customers, Saurer noted that they have become very loyal to LNS.

Cavan Newsome, director of marketing and customer experience at Kings Mountain, North Carolina-headquartered LNS America Inc., said the chatbot has opened a new channel for the company. Traditionally, customers needed to phone, e-mail or fax in an order to conduct business with LNS. “Now, we’ve got this new digital channel through the chatbot in our portal. You’re giving customers a new way to interact with you and do business with you that you didn’t have before, which to me is a competitive differentiator because I’m not aware of any competitors offering this as well.”

Having a positive result for the chatbot, Saurer said LNS decided to incorporate Rimon’s video-based documentation system as its second AI project. Rimon reports that at the heart of the system is the Digital Walter software, which is the “experienced worker/handyman” assistant that makes expert knowledge searchable and finds the right spot in videos and documents. Experts at manufacturers record their work hands-free with body cameras and the system instantly turns the recording into multilingual instructions.

Saurer emphasized that LNS employs many experienced workers who will retire in the coming years, and the company wants to keep their critical know-how in the organization after they leave. Automated by AI, the Rimon system enables that by capturing experts’ actions and verbal instructions so that it can be accessed by younger workers.

He used the example of two personas, Gerard and Louis, to illustrate the benefit of video-based documentation to transfer knowledge. Gerard is 61 years old and plans to retire in four years after working with the company for 40 years, while Louis is 23 and just starting. Gerard’s knowledge is in his head and based on experience and not documented in a structured way. He’s not a teacher but rather a hands-on worker, and even if he were a teacher, Louis does not have the patience to listen to someone talk about procedures for an extended amount of time.

“For Louis, things have to be very quick, but there still needs to be communication between Gerard and Louis,” Saurer said. As the two workers talk and perform manufacturing operations, a camera captures the information, and the software uploads it to the remote back end where it becomes available to AI. “Then it’s available for Louis, but it’s also available to everyone else because Louis is probably not going to stay 40 years with the company anyway.”

In addition, Word documents, for example, can include photos and standard work instructions and those can be converted to videos, Newsome said.

LNS introduced the system at a manufacturing workshop in Italy, and plans to expand its use. The goal is also to have service people use it for troubleshooting and showroom personnel use it to go through various tasks. “We want the knowledge of using and troubleshooting and maintaining our products to be captured with this tool as well,” Saurer said.