RACV sets data foundations to underpin AI in customer channels

RACV is looking to expand AI use cases in its call centre and digital channels, with Salesforce’s Data 360 cloud service seen as a key technical enabler.

RACV's Simon Baldock, middle, at Agentforce World Tour Sydney.

The Victoria-based home, motor and travel services provider is “quite early in [its] journey from a Data 360 perspective”, according to digital technology general manager Simon Baldock.

Speaking at Agentforce World Tour Sydney, Baldock said that Data 360 is presently used “mostly for compliance, observability and auditability of a number of AI initiatives that we have in production or under pilot.”

But the company is looking at Data 360 to underpin its AI roadmap, with the technology set to be incorporated into its voice, web and mobile customer channels.

“Recently, we’ve been very focused on our data strategy and our AI strategy, and how Salesforce will help us with that,” Baldock said.

Data 360 was formerly known as Salesforce Data Cloud. The concept of the service is to build a data-driven 360-degree view of customers”, according to the vendor’s product documentation.

To achieve this, Data 360 not only centralises data from across the Salesforce stack, but also is able to draw upon data held in a range of third-party systems.

It uses what it calls a “zero copy” architecture to access data in third-party systems, meaning the data remains in the source system and is not moved or copied into Salesforce.

Baldock - who is accountable for software engineering and software delivery for RACV’s contact centre, mobile app and websites - indicated that the company’s ambition for AI in its service channels is reasonably broad.

“We’re first focusing on contact centre efficiency improvements, but it’ll quickly move into agentic AI, so how we can put agents in front of our staff members and our consultants to help make their day more efficient and automate some … business transactions,” Baldock said.

“Data 360 is going to be essential to grounding those solutions with data from around our ecosystem, using the zero-copy features.”

RACV has already deployed a “knowledge virtual assistant” in the contact centre “that helps our on-the-phone consultants distil our very complex and large published base” into accurate responses to members’ questions.

It is also looking at using AI for call transcript summarisation, sentiment analysis and auto call wrap-up in the contact centre space.

“Given we are a regulated insurance company, we use Data 360 [as an] auditability and feedback loop to drive the continuous improvement of that virtual assistant,” Baldock said.

“We need to make adjustments and finetune these solutions to make sure they really are living up to expectations and doing the right thing for our members, customers and brand.”

Beyond the contact centre, Data 360 is set to “supercharge” the organisation’s ‘next best x’ capabilities, including next best offer and next best conversation.

These kinds of capabilities are relatively common in financial services and insurance, and allow organisations to have timely and relevant interactions with customers.

“We know we need data from across a really complex data ecosystem at RACV to make it a really meaningful experience for our staff and for our members as well,” Baldock said.

Brand and experience protection

While RACV is expanding its use of AI, it is doing so with a mindset of also protecting its brand, and its member and customer experiences.

“We’re being very deliberate about what we decide to do and not do,” he said.

“We’re not just chasing efficiency benefits; we’re making sure it’s the right thing for our customers, members and our staff members as well.”

The organisation has set up an “AI strategy, delivery and execution function” to help it get use cases for the technology into production.

Baldock said that effort and investment was also being put into sourcing innovative ideas from across the organisation, and providing time and resources to staff and squads to action these ideas.

Accenture is a long-term partner to RACV with respect to Salesforce, and the two organisations have an “innovation fund where there is money put aside so we can work on these cool innovative ideas with Accenture [as well].”

Ry Crozier attended Agentforce World Tour Sydney as a guest of Salesforce.