Use Case: Integrating Azure with OpenAI GPT-4 to optimise a helpdesk service

As consumers increasingly demand speed and efficiency, it has become imperative for businesses to ensure 24/7 service availability and 100% personalised experiences. It is essential for businesses to deliver a hyper-personalised, omnichannel experience to their customers.

One solution to meet this growing demand is integrating Azure with OpenAI GPT-4, as it provides the robustness required to automate and improve customer service. To fully appreciate the benefits of these integrations, let’s consider a company in the hospitality industry where guests may require varied assistance at any time during their stay.

Xpand IT was challenged by the customer support department of a company in the hotel industry to implement a solution that took advantage of Azure OpenAI Services LLM models. The goal was to overcome the limitations they had in providing a continuous and immediate response to their customers.

Initially, the business decided to implement an automated 24/7 chatbot system that, according to its knowledge base, could answer common questions, such as availability for reservations, general conditions, promotions and opening hours, and provide contact details for the relevant departments. A second aspect was normalising customer requests, i.e. if the chatbot could not solve the initial request, it was necessary to create a supporting flow to classify tickets opened by the customer. This facilitated the support agent’s work, as he already had access to the classification of the request and the customer booking details – room number and department.

At an early stage, Xpand IT instructed a chatbot model to respond clearly and accurately to customer requests. In addition to being available at all times and managing a large workflow, GPT-4 is able to understand and respond quickly and accurately to multiple complaints or requests for assistance, regardless of when and how they are made. To add value for customers, Azure Speech Services’ speech-to-text and text-to-speech capabilities were implemented, too, allowing customers to send hands-free messages and the chatbot to respond similarly.

If the chatbot is unable to provide a satisfactory response, the customer is given the option to create a ticket. For this scenario, Xpand IT has developed workflows to automatically categorise the tickets created. The integration of Azure with GPT-4 enables the automation of several tasks related to a hotel’s helpdesk service. When a customer opens a new ticket, GPT-4 uses its semantic capabilities to classify the request into categories such as reservations, payments, room service or logistics, and by urgency – low, medium or high. This not only streamlines the workflow of the hotel’s customer service agents but also enables them to provide a more accurate and efficient solution.

By integrating Azure with OpenAI GPT-4, this hotel has achieved:

• 24/7 availability: The hotel’s customer support is available in real-time, regardless of schedule, ensuring a seamless experience for guests;
• Rapid response: Guests receive prompt responses, reducing waiting times and increasing guest satisfaction;
• Operational efficiency: Automating support processes reduces agents’ manual workload, allowing them to focus on higher-value tasks;
• Data analytics: Azure integration enables the hotel to collect and analyse ticket data to identify trends, patterns and areas for improvement;
• Cost reduction: Having modernised their customer support process, the hotel was able to reduce operational costs;
• Increased competitiveness: Customers have a more agile, personalised, and efficient service than the rest of the competition.

Integrating Azure with OpenAI GPT-4 gave this hotel an effective response to scalability issues and managing customer expectations. It is now known for its innovative, fast, personalised, and efficient service. In addition, by collecting and analysing customer data, this hotel has a broad view of areas that need improvement, allowing it to continuously adapt the system to ensure customer loyalty and greater competitiveness in today’s hospitality market.

If you are interested in integrating Azure with GPT-4 in your organisation, please do not hesitate to contact us. We have a specialised and multidisciplinary team capable of assisting you at every stage, from definition to implementation and maintenance of the solution. Count on us to take your business to the next level.