Kaizen AMS resolves issues faster with AI

For Kaizen AMS, which manages over 25,000 residential buildings in the United Arab Emirates, listening to and resolving customer issues quickly is vital for business—and so is the use of AI and other cutting-edge tools for customer service.

Until 2018, the company managed all customer queries through a shared inbox handled by five administrators. But as the volume of queries and the number of buildings in the portfolio grew significantly, it became challenging to keep up. Even as more agents joined the organization, it wasn’t enough to keep track of email threads and who was handling which customer or building. Missed emails or delayed responses were sure to impact Kaizen’s vision of becoming the most admired brand in the built environment.

With Freshworks, Kaizen AMS found a solution to these challenges and a quick and easy way to integrate more AI tools into its enterprise stack. With Freshworks, Kaizen AMS was able to capture and analyze all customer service data and automate routine queries.

The company

Founded in 2006, Kaizen Asset Management Services is among the top property management and owners’ association firms in Dubai, with more than 25,000 residential properties and 250 employees in the UAE. The company handles everything from property management and owners’ association management to community management, lease management, handover services, and investment advisory.

The challenge

All customer requests, from residents as well as property owners, were handled through a shared email inbox accessed by the company’s five administrators. On average, an agent would manage issues arising from 25 to 30 email queries in a day for the buildings they each handled—concerning air conditioning, security, elevators, leaks, and other operational aspects of the buildings managed by the company.

Because the inbox was shared by multiple users, agents would often mistakenly open emails meant for their colleagues, which would leave them marked as “read” and susceptible to being overlooked by the assigned agent. On occasion, even critical emails on bigger issues, such as leaks, were delayed because of the tangle of messages and response threads. None of this activity was tracked by customer, building, or issue, leaving Kaizen without critical insights. 

The problems stemming from relying on a shared inbox were soon to balloon as the number of buildings Kaizen AMS managed grew rapidly. Plus, many of the younger residents of new properties preferred getting in touch through chat rather than emails or calls. And given that the agents were spread across different regions, with different linguistic and cultural nuances, responding appropriately and consistently was critical to Kaizen’s ability to maintain its high standards.

The solution

Kaizen AMS needed a modern ticketing solution to organize all customer service data and provide AI-driven automation for routing queries and suggesting standardized responses. The company implemented Freshdesk in 2018 and, after organizational restructuring that involved taking a centralized, omnichannel approach to customer service, added Freshchat in 2020. A new call center operation from Maqsam and a property management software called Socienta worked alongside Freshdesk and Freshchat to provide the company with a much more comprehensive view of the customer, allowing it to drill down on past customer interactions.

The customer service team, which has grown to 40 people, now handles over 300 calls and up to 250 emails per day, with each agent responding to around 40 chats a day—all without the confusion that prevailed before.

“Freshdesk is our main channel and source of data where all customer issues are collected,” says Vidyashree Cawa, senior manager of customer experience at Kaizen AMS. It has helped the company segregate, analyze, and prioritize issues. With AI chatbots, she says, the company has automated responses to many routine queries, such as statements of account and status of payment. As a result, Kaizen AMS saves significant agent time that otherwise would have gone to waste.

In addition, Kaizen AMS uses Freddy AI Copilot features like Rephraser and Tone Enhancer to help agents across regions respond to customer queries in a standardized way. These tools equip agents with AI-generated text to respond to customer queries in a unified brand voice and boost agent productivity, making the lives of its agents easier and improving the experience for customers. “Freddy AI Copilot helps enhance agents’ responses—they are well-versed with AI and feel handicapped without the feature now,” adds Cawa.

Impact

Thanks to Freshworks solutions, built on Neo Platform and powered by AWS, Kaizen AMS has achieved a first resolution SLA of 99%, compared to the industry standard of 83%. With Freddy AI Copilot, the company has observed a significant decrease in response times and increased agent productivity. Looking ahead, Kaizen plans to adopt AI as a big part of its day-to-day operations and thus expand its usage of Freddy AI Copilot to fuel its growth and stay ahead of the competition.