Telstra deploys AI agent to help it meet customer service guarantee

Telstra is using AI agents powered by Salesforce to assist it in meeting its customer service guarantee obligations, with additional use cases planned.

The telco revealed in March that it was backing Salesforce’s Agentforce platform, but at the time would not say how it planned to use the technology.

It is now clear that Agentforce is being used to assist the telco’s 1000-plus contact centre staff.

One of the first use cases is compliance.

The customer service guarantee or CSG mandates how quickly telcos must restore a broken landline service, and how much compensation they must pay if restoration takes too long.

Telstra said in a statement that it had built “an interim service agent that automates the end-to-end process of helping customers stay connected while they wait for their fixed service to be restored.”

“Agentforce is used throughout a guided workflow to validate eligibility, calculate refund amounts, and monitor for restoration of a customer’s service before applying the refund and updating customer records,” Telstra said.

“This reduces the administrative load on more than 1000 contact centre representatives, ensuring accuracy and faster outcomes while helping Telstra maintain compliance with NBN and customer service guarantee standards.”

“By automating complex, manual processes like interim refunds, Agentforce is helping us improve efficiency and accuracy across our contact centres,” customer service representative Amy Childs said.

“More importantly, it shifts the focus of our frontline teams from administrative processing to delivering meaningful support to our customers.”

Telstra has a second AI agent live that is based on Agentforce, though it is more internally-focused.

“A security permissions agent …continuously and autonomously monitors user access, system configurations, and permissions across the Salesforce environment,” the telco said.

It’s understood that the telco has a “roadmap” of AI agents it now intends to deploy in areas such as billing and payments, and for triaging inbound emails addressed to its B2B sales teams.

The telco predicted a reduction in its operating costs and improved ability to handle “routine enquiries” as a result of its agentic investments.