Company: IBM, Armonk, New York, NY
Company Description: IBM is the hybrid cloud and AI technology and services leading provider, focused on delivering client value through a combination of technology and business expertise. IBM solutions draw from an industry-leading portfolio of capabilities in software, consulting services and a deep incumbency in mission-critical systems, all bolstered by one of the world’s leading research organizations.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Categories - Technology Solutions
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Solution
 Nomination Title: IBM's Watsonx
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length about the nominated new or new-version product or service, OR written answers to the questions for this category? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the nominated video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this first question: If this is a brand-new product, state the date on which it was released. If this is a new version of an existing product, state the date on which the update was released:
Released September 19, 2023.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this second question: Describe the features, functions, and benefits of the nominated product or service (up to 350 words):
Total 238 words used.
Imagine a work environment where your most tedious tasks are reliably handled for you, enabling you to use your time for more satisfying, high-value work. That's exactly what IBM envisioned for our support agents, whose productivity was being dragged down by the task of manually summarizing extensive case details.
Today, our agents can focus more on resolving customer issues and less on documenting them. The AI system handles the complexity and scale of our organization effectively, augmenting our agents’ solutions with reliable documentation that enables us to constantly refine the quality of service we can provide.
The impact of this innovation extends far beyond the confines of case resolution. The time that was once lost to manual tasks is now redirected toward enhancing customer satisfaction and streamlining operations. Account teams now have the power to strengthen relationships with clients by quickly identifying high-impact concerns. By leveraging summary topic extraction, sales teams can efficiently develop account plans and address recurring issues. “When account planning, imagine our sales team being able to summarize 30–40 pages of case interactions into only a handful of sentences, identifying the resolution of high impact issues. What could have taken minutes is instead reduced to seconds.
Additionally, summarization enables better supervision for escalation and duty managers, improves assistance for resolution teams, and facilitates knowledge sharing among experts. These advances showcase IBM's dedication to utilizing cutting-edge technologies like watsonx to enhance customer satisfaction and streamline operations.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this third question: Outline the market performance, critical reception, and customer satisfaction with the product or service to date. State monetary or unit sales figures to date, if possible, and how they compare to expectations or past performance. Provide links to laudatory product or service reviews. Include some customer testimonials, if applicable (up to 350 words):
Total 345 words used.
IBM, with its highly variable landscape of products and users, had to deal with a variety of complex support cases. Subject Matter Experts within IBM Support excelled at providing resolution to over 3 million cases a year, but writing summaries was a time-consuming task. Before watsonx, creating resolution summaries took an average of thirty-five minutes per case. This process was complicated further when cases involved multiple parties, each with partial information. Manual summarization hindered the ability to derive valuable insights from case data, limiting the potential for informed decision-making and strategic improvements.
To address this, IBM leveraged the power of AI through watsonx.ai. The team used its LLM models and a processing pipeline to automate summarization of Support Cases at the time of closing. The Cognitive Tooling team worked with 100 SMEs to build a “golden dataset” that could be used to tune the LLM. Despite initial skepticism, results started to drastically improve. The team then identified three main use cases for summarization: summarizing a resolved case, summarizing an initial problem description, and escalating a case for SME review. They implemented API middleware that connected the Cognitive Support Platform (IBM Customer Support platform) to the watsonx.ai system, extracting and shaping text from cases into prompts and reshaping results to fit back into the platform.
In September 2023, the Cognitive Tooling team at IBM successfully deployed an AI model that automated the process of writing case summaries, a task previously handled manually by nearly 25,000 support agents. Using watsonx.ai, the team reduced the time spent on summarizing extensive case details from thirty-five minutes to just a few seconds, saving around 125,000 hours each quarter and nearly $12M from digital labor efficiencies. This not only increased the pace at which studies were produced; it also ensured that almost all resolved cases now receive summaries, enhancing customer new case resolution time and customer satisfaction, as well as streamlining operations.
IBM's success demonstrates the potential of AI in transforming customer support processes, not only within IBM but also for other companies facing similar challenges.
- You have the option to answer this final question: Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
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