National Rail Enquiries (NRE) is the definitive source of information for all passenger rail services on the National Rail network in England, Wales and Scotland. Classified as a ‘Super Site’ by the UK Government, nationalrail.co.uk is one of the busiest websites in the country. In 2007, NRE came to Creative Virtual and our partner Virtual Zone for help in unlocking the wealth of information on their website.

Prior to the implementation of a Virtual Assistant, the NRE website was already receiving 100 million visits per year. But with 12,900 pages on the website, they needed a way to help customers find the answers they needed quickly, consistently and efficiently.

The Challenge

NRE were looking for a solution to reach a specific set of goals:

• Reduce customer frustration by providing an online service
• Take pressure off call centre staff
• Reduce customer service costs
• Produce a solution that is engaging and enhances the NRE brand
• Reduce the average handling time for contact centre agents and person to person customer interactions
• Enhance the overall user experience of the website

The Solution

After exploring other options, including Live Chat and an enhanced FAQ system, NRE determined that a virtual assistant was the best solution to reach their goals for numerous reasons:

• Quick and easy to implement
• Very user friendly
• Able to provide an easy way for users to interact with information and FAQs on the website
• Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year
• Very cost effective compared to other channels

The team started the development of Ask Lisa by identifying the key areas of information on the NRE site and using the virtual assistant as an intelligent FAQ system including links to appropriate web pages.

After a review of the types of information customers were already searching for on the site, those questions and answers were added to the knowledgebase as well.

The team then began implementing ‘decision trees’ thus allowing Lisa to answer even more complex questions.

Ask Lisa went live on 10 July 2007, and the team has continued to constantly improve the system. Lisa’s conversations are regularly reviewed to identify and fill gaps in her knowledge base.

Since the launch a number of new developments have been implemented in the V-Person™:

• Journey Planner Help: An interactive user guide

• Journey Planner Hand Hold: Lisa collects information from the user and completes the Journey Planner with the journey details

• ‘Auto Load’ Journey Planner: Lisa recognises to and from stations and automatically loads the Journey Planner

• Live Travel Updates: A list of current disruptions to services which is updated every 2 minutes

• Station Information: Specific information including car park prices and ticket office opening times

The Result

NRE were provided with a solution that was implemented quickly (6-8 weeks), improved the user experience and provides consistent answers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Lisa was an instant success.

Lisa answers an average over 9,000 questions every day—that’s over 3 million questions a year!

Currently Lisa is updated with the real time travel information every 2 minutes and with updated station information every night.

Lisa provides answers to 95% of questions asked and over 90% of her answers are independently rated as ideal (from an external audit). This is a better statistic than the off-shore call centre and on a par with the national call centre.

This system has been so effective that it is now also being used as an ‘expert system’ in call centres as a tool for call centre staff to answer customer enquiries.