​​​​​​​Avetta is a global leader in supply chain risk management. More than 130,000 businesses in over 120 countries use the company’s platform to build safe and sustainable relationships with contractors and suppliers. 

Avetta’s customers range from Fortune 500 giants to small, family-run operations. Avetta needs to serve them all equally, which requires a multifaceted approach. Avetta operates as a technology and software company offering value-added solutions, a business process outsourcing provider managing essential functions for enterprise customers, and a network-based company that powers a vast ecosystem connecting clients and suppliers around the world​​​​.

As Avetta looked to scale, its team explored how to better incorporate AI into its various operations—and how Slalom and Salesforce could help with that transformation. 

Initially, Avetta had explored​​​​​​ menu-based chatbots. These early bots were an innovative way to improve customer support. However, the bots produced some significant challenges, such as customers not always finding their answers on the menu or receiving links to resources that were several pages long and full of dense industry jargon. 

In both cases, users would still need to speak with a live agent. That resulted in less internal efficiency and a lower customer satisfaction score when engaging with the chatbot. Avetta’s team knew its strategy needed to change.

“We would have continued with suboptimal customer experience and poor containment rate, which is just a bad overall outcome for our customers and for us internally,” says Richard Parke, senior vice president of Supplier Services at Avetta.

One of Avetta’s objectives is to become as scalable as possible in providing resolutions to its customers quickly without having to rely on individuals. The company has partnered with Slalom since 2016 on several Salesforce implementations. Avetta’s team knew it could count on that collaboration once again, especially since they had an internal drive to build a stronger solution.  

“We had to make sure we had a robust enough knowledge base that a true generative AI (GenAI) agent would be able to understand the intent of the customer based on the cues and queries it’s putting into the chat,” Parke says. “Then, it could intelligently go out and find information from multiple knowledge articles and provide it back in a consumable way, in real human language.”

Most of Avetta’s cases originate from inbound phone calls. The team also wanted to leverage ​​​​Service Cloud Voice alongside Agentforce so agents could assist customers more efficiently in real time. While the companies had an existing relationship, these solutions were the best and most effective options on the market for Avetta. Here’s how that two-pronged approach unfolded. 

To enhance supplier support, Avetta partnered with Slalom to implement Agentforce as a next-generation chat deflection tool. The implementation was initially delivered as a proof of concept with Salesforce licensing AI Agent and Agent Assist before evolving into Avetta’s first live Agentforce deployment.

“The implementation of the Agentforce service agent not only helps customers, the suppliers, but it also really helps the admins,” says ​​​​​​Gada Lam, a senior delivery principal at Slalom. “In a traditional bot, you go in and build out very specific dialogue paths for all your scenarios. A lot of that is abstracted away with the use of GenAI, so it alleviates some of that maintenance for admins.”

The shift to Agentforce allows Avetta to improve GenAI capabilities through feedback loops. Avetta’s team can note where an AI agent may have given an answer that wasn’t the best possible response and share it with Slalom. Then, the Salesforce team can look at knowledge articles, instructions the agent has, and prompt templates to pull data and make adjustments. It’s a different—and more efficient—experience than going through permutations and computations of key-value pairs for a standard bot. This added efficiency led to a 25% decrease in service rep handle time.​​​​​​ 

“It’s easy to step back and say, ‘Let’s let somebody else go out and work the kinks out of this,’ and discover all the potholes. Then we can go, and it will be smooth sailing,” Parke says. “The reality is it won’t because there’s not going to be any AI deployment that is going to look the same elsewhere. We had to have the courage to forge our own path, and fortunately we had a great partner to forge it with.” 

Slalom’s team also improved service rep efficiency through Einstein Service features such as automated replies, conversation catch-up, and case wrap-up.

To complement Agentforce and further boost productivity among service reps, Slalom also implemented Service Cloud Voice with Avetta’s existing Talkdesk telephony system. Avetta’s support team can now utilize multi-contact phone matching, automatic case creation, call recording, and multilingual call transcription.

Additionally, Slalom’s team used an intuitive screen flow to resolve an ongoing issue with duplicate contacts. And Avetta’s technology team is well positioned for future enhancements, such as Einstein Conversation Insights and voice-triggered actions.

“It really is the whole package,” says Marcus Bruninghaus, a director at Slalom. “It’s the Agent Assist features providing the options for a live service agent to respond. Service Cloud Voice captures the transcript, and the conversational agent interacts with the suppliers. It wasn’t just a new product; it was also a new way of working.”

The concurrent workstreams spanned 13 weeks and fulfilled over 60 requirements to reach a minimum viable product. Building on its team’s strong, open-minded approach to technology and the ease of integration with existing systems, Parke and Avetta have worked with Slalom to achieve its vision of operational excellence and innovation.   ​​​​ 

“I want to add how cutting-edge this project was. We were learning on the fly and working with Salesforce to navigate around solutions or come up with work-arounds,” Lam says. “We’re all very proud that we could deliver something that is so new, and Avetta is one of the first customers that went live with this solution.” 

“From the very beginning, we were focused on reducing call handle time and increasing chat containment, transferring fewer chats to a live human agent,” says Bruninghaus. “We’ve accomplished both of those.”

The pilot group alone saw a 38% increase in call deflection, while the containment rate more than doubled from 20% to 49%. Avetta now plans to extend Agentforce and Service Cloud Voice to additional English-speaking suppliers before moving into multi-language capabilities. The company will also expand into new channels, such as email, where AI agents can help.

“We were never afraid to bring a problem to the table and have a conversation about it,” Bruninghaus says, crediting the trust and spirited attitude of Avetta’s team. “We were working as a team to solve the problem. Everyone was showing up to work hard and get it done.” 

With a decade of partnership, collaboration, and willingness to push and innovate in new areas, Avetta and Slalom feel confident about accomplishing even more together. 

“Our systems have to reflect an understanding of who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish for all of our customer constituencies,” Parke says. “Slalom gets it. They understand who we are and what we’re trying to do. That’s very valuable to us.”