​Xero implements machine learning for better customer personalisation

Xero has today launched a My Cases feature within Xero Central, using machine learning to personalise content and speed up response time in order to deliver better customer experience (CX).

Xero Central is built on the Salesforce Community platform and powered by Coveo machine learning, and aims to provide customers faster resolutions to potential issues, with instantaneous answers to common questions and support issues. To do this, it tracks patterns and obtains insights from previous support issues, and also offers opportunities for further learning and surfaces relevant content.

Xero executive general manager of customer success, Nigel Piper, said 70 per cent of the cloud-based accounting vendor's customers prefer to find answers to their questions online.

“This has been a work in progress for a couple of years now in order to try and give more power back to our customers,” Piper told CMO. "Now, customers can find articles easier thanks to machine learning capabilities, and with the introduction of My Cases, people can see all of their cases on a portal, how long a responses is going to take, with more visibility over them and more control."

“People want to find the answers to themselves, they are comfortable doing that. So now, we’ll surface to them contextual articles, using machine learning for suggested responses. We are confident they are going to find the answers the first time, but we have a fantastic team of accountants that can take the case up if necessary."

For Piper, it's all about making sure the customers have control. "It is our aim to keep improving this, and there is more we want to do to ensure customers have a fantastic experience.”

The next stage will see Xero educating customers around the topics most relevant to them. “There is no point scattergunning a whole heap of content and hoping people consume it. We know what our customers are interesting in, what courses they’ve done, and can suggest the next action or course, in case they want to learn more," Piper continued. 

“Consumers are savvy, and highly selective. They are also happy to get something relevant to them, but they don’t want to be bombarded with stuff that is not relevant to them.”

Piper also said the implementation of the ML platform with Coveo has been fast, and offers scalability as Xero continues to grow.

“We see Xero Central as the beginning. We want to use this platform to truly help customers have a personalised learning experience, allowing users to go on a beautiful seamless journey with Xero, and fully understand the benefits of our platform," he said. 

With Xero Central already proving successful at providing customers with a holistic destination to find information, My Cases further streamlines the process for both users and Xero’s customer support, Piper said.

"We can provide high value answers at speed with the use of machine learning. Fundamentally - Xero’s mission is to give more time back to our customers.

“As we grow beyond 1.6 million customers in more than 180 countries around the world, we are always looking at how we can take our customer service to the next level, particularly as we grow at speed. My Cases is an important piece of the puzzle that will allow us to scale our approach in order to provide the best possible experience for all our users."

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