DPD’s AI Integration: Enhancing Customer and Employee Experience
DPD has ambitious plans to integrate AI throughout its Salesforce platform, aiming to automate tasks and significantly enhance the experiences of both customers and employees. DPD Salesforce AI Enhancements.
Adam Hooper, Head of Central Platforms at DPD, explains that with over 400 million parcels delivered annually, maintaining robust customer relationships is crucial. To this end, DPD leverages a range of Salesforce technologies, including Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Mulesoft.
AI-Powered Customer Service
In Salesforce’s latest update on DPD:
- Service Cloud: DPD uses AI-powered insights to route cases to the appropriate advisors, streamlining processes and speeding up case resolution.
- WhatsApp Integration: Customers can now contact DPD via WhatsApp, which offers both self-service through a chatbot and automatic case creation. This service has seen interactions double year-on-year.
Financial and Operational Efficiency
- Mulesoft: DPD’s finance team can access invoices and issue statements in one place. This integration also provides account managers and business development teams with financial and parcel data within Salesforce, facilitating critical business decisions.
- Forecasting: Teams can automatically capture customer forecasts, allowing DPD to swiftly adapt to volume fluctuations and market changes.
Targeted Marketing
- Marketing Cloud: DPD’s marketing team uses this platform to engage B2B prospects and customers at key relationship milestones. It also enables industry-specific campaigns, such as those targeting the healthcare sector.
Spreadsheets to Salesforce
At the Salesforce World Tour event in London, Ben Pyne, Salesforce Platform Manager at DPD, elaborated on their current usage and future AI plans. Pyne’s team acts as internal consultants to optimize organizational workflows. As he explains:
“My role is essentially to get people off spreadsheets and onto Salesforce!”
He noted that about 40 departments and teams within DPD use Salesforce, far beyond the typical Sales and CRM applications. Custom applications within Salesforce personalize and enhance user experiences by focusing on relevant information.
Using tools like Prompt Builder, Pyne’s team recently developed a project management app within Salesforce, streamlining tasks like writing acceptance criteria and user stories. Pyne emphasized:
“I want our guys to focus on designing and building, less on the admin.”
AI Use Cases
When considering AI and generative AI, DPD sees significant potential to reduce operational tasks. Pyne highlighted case summarization as an obvious application, given the millions of customer service cases created each year.
Rolling Out Generative AI
DPD adopts a cautious approach to rolling out new technologies like generative AI. Pyne explained:
“It’s starting small, finding the right teams to be able to do it. But fundamentally, starting somewhere and making slow progressions into it to ensure we don’t scare everybody away.”
Ensuring Security and Trust
Security and trust are paramount for DPD. Pyne noted their robust IT security team scrutinizes every implementation. Fortunately, Salesforce’s security measures, such as data anonymization and preventing LLMs (Large Language Models) from learning from their data, provide peace of mind. Pyne concluded:
“We can focus on what we’re good at and not worry about the rest because Salesforce has thought of everything for us.”
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