Laybuy’s New Digital Employee ‘Hugo’ Scales Up International Customer Service

Auckland, 05 May 2022 - New Zealand’s leading Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) provider Laybuy has successfully launched Ambit’s conversational AI platform as its newest digital employee ‘Hugo’, a move that will significantly improve customer experience and help support Laybuy’s continued international growth.

‘Hugo’ is an intelligent chatbot, or Digital Employee, who is able to instantly answer a wide range of common questions on Laybuy’s website, providing customers with real time responses to everyday enquiries.

Laybuy co-founder and Managing Director Gary Rohloff says “employing” Hugo was an important and innovative step to help manage the increasing demand on Laybuy’s customer services team as the company continued on its rapid growth trajectory.

“In just the past year, our customer base has increased by nearly 25 percent and we now have nearly one million consumers actively using Laybuy in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom,” says Gary.

“We know that the key to maintaining this growth is making sure we continue to make our customers' lives easier. This means providing them with an ongoing seamless and first class customer experience, including answering their questions quickly and comprehensively each and every time they make contact. Hugo is helping us do just that.”

Available 24/7 on Laybuy’s website, Hugo is answering many of the common questions customers have that up until recently had to be answered by the customer services team, such as help resetting passwords, questions around refunds and returns, as well as payment enquiries. This frees up the customer service team to work more closely with those customers who have complex queries that require specialised expertise.

“Hugo is really supporting our customer service team, helping them work more efficiently and to deliver a high quality service, while also ensuring we continue to meet customer expectations for a real time, integrated payments experience,” says Gary.

“We are proud to be one of New Zealand’s leading Fintechs, which is why we were delighted to partner with a fellow innovative Kiwi tech company such as Ambit to create Hugo. There’s been a real synergy between our teams as we train Hugo in the language of payments.”

Laybuy tested and deployed Hugo in a matter of weeks in late 2021 in time to help out with the busy Christmas and New Year retail period.

“Conversational AI can significantly enhance the retail and payments customer experience. We are in a 24/7 economy now, and companies want to deliver a superior experience while managing support costs. We look forward to developing further innovative customer service solutions with Laybuy,” says Tim Warren, Co-founder and CEO of Ambit.

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