In heading up the technology strategy for Singapore Internet provider MyRepublic, David Robinson faced a series of executive-level questions regarding transformational change.

How to drive cost reduction without dropping operational efficiency? How to build a business and operational model and structure that allows for deployment and growth in multiple markets? How to standardise processes across the organisation?

Under his leadership as Group Chief Technology Officer, MyRepublic first tackled customer services, aligning to three core objectives: reduce customer interactions with customer service staff; improve service quality and increase operational efficiency.

After aligning processes and systems internally, Robinson and his team identified “multiple inefficiencies and bottlenecks” built up over time, before establishing a dedicated site reliability engineering team to establish standard operating procedures for operational and network infrastructure teams to follow.

Next, the business centralised all systems and network functions to enhance knowledge sharing across the group, while also resolving response speed issues for customers.

MyRepublic also implemented a customer self-service system, allowing customers to communicate with an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chat bot which differed from traditional knowledge-base chat bots.

According to Robinson, the solution understands customer problems and runs a number of different scenarios including speed test checks and connections in order to determine the best response back.           

Through the new changes, the business reported a drop in contact rate across all channels (from 9.2 to 6); a 16 per cent reduction of repeat callers and low phone abandon rate (reduced from 30 per cent to 14 per cent).

This was in addition to a chat average response time of less than 40 seconds, an increase of live chat sessions (24 per cent to 32 per cent) and a reduction in operational staff.

Following the concept of ‘people, process and technology’, Robinson’s transformative overhaul not only reduced costs but also increased efficiency and enhanced customer experience levels. This, in turn, led to a higher number of re-contracts which positively impacted the bottom line.

Plus, this was all conducted within the first quarter of Robinson’s employment with the business.