ECHO enables customer self-service with Oracle Digital Assistant

For nearly 50 years, ECHO has been a leading manufacturer of professional-grade outdoor power equipment. The company designs and manufactures tools that are sold throughout an independent dealer network across North America and Latin America, as well as through the world’s largest home retailer, the Home Depot.

ECHO supports customers and a wide range of SKUs via call centers. When the pandemic hit and consumers increased spending on home improvement projects, ECHO saw an increase in both sales and call volume, including a 33% increase in communication volume to its call centers. The customer service representatives in those call centers were also handling questions from Home Depot’s help portal, nearly overwhelming the system.

After analyzing calls into the center, it was clear that most questions were knowledge-based, with customers seeking information on how to use the variety of tools ECHO provided. ECHO also realized that the chat function was difficult to find on its website, and customers were unable to serve themselves. ECHO knew that it needed to upgrade its self-service capabilities to maintain its reputation of stellar customer service.

As an existing user of Oracle Service, ECHO decided that Oracle Digital Assistant was the best option to help the company improve customer experiences. Oracle also prioritized working with ECHO and its partner, Fishbowl Solutions, to optimize the application.

To date, Oracle Digital Assistant has helped ECHO achieve a call deflection rate of 83%. This rate can be attributed to unifying an existing Oracle-empowered knowledge management base for Oracle Digital Assistant to build from. This success, in combination with ease-of-use of the system, has resulted in handled chats increasing from 500 a month to more than 3,000 a month, all without placing additional stress on call center agents. ECHO has also seen exponential growth in return-on-investment savings, with Oracle Digital Assistant resolving an increasing number of chats without the use of live agents.

For the implementation, Oracle worked with the team at ECHO to move the location of the chat function on ECHO’s company website and rethink its overall web design. Oracle also provided support integrating Oracle Digital Assistant with Oracle Service, which proved to be a powerful combination.

With its new chat capabilities, ECHO was able to deflect routine calls and make live chats more efficient with immediate responses. Most importantly, ECHO has improved the customer experience with the ease and empowerment of self-service.

ECHO chose Fishbowl Solutions for the implementation. Fishbowl Solutions worked hand-in-hand with Oracle and ECHO to implement an innovative Oracle Digital Assistant. The chatbot took on branding customizations, with integration points to Oracle Service on both knowledge and live chat. When the chat receives a question, it will search on the knowledgebase to find a best answer, using AI to improve these results over time.