How a deployment works

Every Telonic deployment follows the same path. We learn how your customer conversations work today, design the agent around your industry and your rules, connect it to your systems and channels, and test it with your team before any customer reaches it. It then goes live on one channel in one department, is reviewed against measures you agreed at the start, and extends from there. This page explains each stage, what it produces and what it asks of your organisation.

The seven stages at a glance

1. Discovery: how your conversations work today

We start by mapping the conversations your customers have with you: what they ask, on which channels, in which languages, at what hours, and how volume moves with the calendar. A hotel group's peaks follow Eid and the summer season. An insurer's follow storms. We also map which systems hold the facts each answer depends on, such as a CRM (the system that holds your customer records), a booking or policy administration system, or a service desk.

From that map, we choose the first process with you. A good first process has high volume, a clear outcome and answers that live in your systems. Typical choices are out-of-hours enquiries for one property launch, booking changes for one hotel, or motor claim status for one insurer.

2. Design: agreeing how the agent behaves before it is built

Design turns the map into decisions your team signs off. Nothing is left for the agent to work out on its own.

The decisions that stay with your team in every case, such as a claims decision or a refund outside policy, are agreed here too. See Decision boundaries.

3. Connect: your systems and your channels

Telonic connects the agent to the systems it needs, with the permissions your IT team grants. Read access and write access are granted separately, system by system, and the agent can only take the actions it has been given. Connecting is Telonic's work. Your IT team provides access and confirms how each system should be used.

The channels are connected in the same stage. Your phone lines connect over SIP (the standard protocol business phone systems use to connect calls) through your existing carrier.

Your WhatsApp Business account is verified with Meta, your mailbox is connected, and the web widget is added to your site where web is in scope. Your hosting option is set up in the region you chose. See Hosting and data residency.

The technical detail

Each connection uses the system's API (the interface a system provides for other software to read and update it), or a custom action where a system has no standard connector. Every connection is tested with test data before it touches live records. See How a system gets connected and What we need from your IT team.

4. Test: before any customer reaches the agent

The agent is first tested against an industry test set: conversations drawn from real patterns in your industry, each scored against what a correct outcome means there. The set includes the awkward cases, such as a customer who changes their mind, a request just outside a limit, and a customer who switches between Arabic and English.

Your team then tests it. The people who run the process today hold test conversations on the real channels, try to break it, and check its answers, its limits and its handovers. The agent goes live only when your team signs off. See Testing before every release.

5. Go live: one channel in one department

Deployments start with one channel in one department. A property developer might start with WhatsApp enquiries for one launch, a hotel with overnight reservation calls, an insurer with claim status calls on one menu option.

The switch stays in your hands. On voice, for example, the routing rule sits in your own phone system, so your team can send calls back to its own queue at any time. From the first day, every conversation is in the console (the Telonic web application your team uses) with its transcript, summary, outcome and the reason for each handover.

6. Review: against the measures you agreed

The review compares what happened with the measures agreed in design. It draws on the record of every conversation: outcomes, reasons for contact, handling time, handovers and quality scores against your standard. The people who received handovers are in the room, because they see where the agent's work ends and theirs begins.

The review produces two things. The first is a list of adjustments, such as a handover rule to tighten or an answer to reword, each tested and approved before release. The second is a decision on where to extend. See How changes go live.

7. Extend: another channel or another department

Extending is a configuration change rather than a new project, because the connections to your systems are already in place. Adding WhatsApp to a deployment that runs on voice, or adding a second department on the same channel, reuses the industry model, the connections and the customer record. A customer who called the claims line last week is recognised when they message about their renewal.

Each department can have its own agent, limits and reporting, while every conversation still writes to one record of each customer. Where a new department relies on a system that is not yet connected, that system goes through the connect and test stages first.

How long it takes

The timeline depends mainly on the systems being connected; you receive a plan with dates before you commit. The plan names each stage, the people needed on both sides, and the date each stage is due to finish. Each later extension gets its own plan in the same form.

In practice

A UAE motor insurer, Wadi Assurance, starts with claim status and grows from there.

1. Discovery. Most calls to the claims line ask where a claim has got to. The answer sits in the claims system, and the claims team answers the same question many times a day.
2. Design. The claims team and Telonic agree to start with motor claim status on voice. Every claims decision stays with the claims team. The measures are repeat contact, how often a conversation goes to a person, and complaints about claim updates.
3. Connect. The insurer's IT team grants read access to the claims and policy systems. The telephony team routes the "claim status" menu option to the agent.
4. Test. The agent passes the insurance test set. Claims handlers then call in Arabic and English, ask about rejected claims and demand a supervisor. They sign off.
5. Go live and review. Calls to that menu option reach the agent. At the review, the claims team asks for any mention of a complaint to go straight to the complaints team. The change is tested and approved.
6. Extend. First notice of loss (the first report of a claim) is added on the same line out of hours, with permission to create a claim and attach documents. Document requests follow on WhatsApp. Later, the retail team adds renewal reminders and renewal questions, on the same customer record.

What your team controls

• Which process, channel and department go first, and the order in which the deployment extends.
• The measures the deployment is judged on, and how each is checked.
• Sign-off on behaviour, limits and handover destinations before go-live.
• Approval of every change after go-live.
• The routing on each channel, including sending conversations back to your team.

Related

• What we do and what your team doesGetting started
• ImplementationCommercial
• How a system gets connected: map, connect, test, go liveIntegrations
• Testing before every releaseGovernance and control
• How changes go liveGovernance and control

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