360˚
200
THE CHALLENGE
Managing customer support in a complex IT landscape
SBA Communications was operating off a complex environment with 200 legal entities, 200 databases,
and a financial system across three production environments.
At any given moment, the system handles thousands of daily transactions. But due to the high volumes of transactions and limitations in Great Plains, over 100 custom applications were developed just to keep the system working. And not all 100 applications that feed into the ERP system had seamless integrations. With 12 posting servers running 24/7, their support team was overwhelmed and struggling to field the nearly 340 monthly calls—150 of these in the final, busiest week of the month. Their financial teams were also constantly scrambling to meet deadlines.
COMPANY
SBA Communications
HEADQUARTERS
Boca Raton, Florida
INDUSTRY
Telecommunications
EMPLOYEES
1787
FEATURED SERVICES:
“ We reached out to OZ Digital Consulting and said we’d like to see how AI can help. ”
— Felix Perez, Senior Director, Digital Transformation, SBA Communications
BUSINESS NEED
Simplifying a complex environment to enable better customer support
They had to find a way to streamline their technology environment and become more efficient, so their helpdesk could provide better customer support and, therefore, better customer experiences. The marketing and sales teams realized the need for a single, unified application that consolidated the information on each lead so they could avoid wasting millions of dollars and thousands of hours on ineffective outreach.
THE SOLUTION
Building conversational AI into the customer experience
SBA Communications and OZ Digital Consulting collaborated to build two AI solutions from the ground
up — 1. “Bob,” a conversational AI agent, and 2. “Bob, the fixer” who not only identifies but also resolves issues. At the heart of these AI-enabled agents lie a blend of technologies — natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and deep learning. Both the Microsoft-enabled solutions built on LLMs and company data streamline customer support with intelligent issue management and automation, drastically reducing resolution times while contributing to some of SBA Communications’ highest customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
IMPACT
Reducing time to resolution and delivering exceptional customer experiences
By using two distinct conversational agents, SBA Communications made the following gains:
• Accelerated time to resolution
• Elevated customer satisfaction
• Provided complete 360° incident visibility
• Achieved higher deflection rate
