Clara
At a glance
- Live at: BDO Unibank (card delivery), Adani Ports (CFS Mag), and others
- Channels: voice (IVR), WhatsApp, email
- Languages: EN, plus customer-specific (e.g. Arabic at Adani)
- First deployed: ~late 2025
- Owner: Customer experience pod
The problem it solves
Card-delivery banks like BDO get a high call volume on three repetitive questions: Where is my card? When will it arrive? Can I reschedule delivery? Human agents spend 60-80% of their time on these — leaving the complex cases (disputes, fraud, tampered cards) under-served.
Clara takes the inbound call, authenticates the caller, fetches order context from the EDMS, and resolves the query without human handoff. Escalates the long tail to a human CC executive with the context already pulled.
How it works
Step by step
- Inbound — call comes through BDO’s IVR, routed to Clara via SIP trunking.
- Authenticate — verifies caller using account ID + DOB or last 4 of card.
- Intent classification — LLM classifies into ~12 buckets (status, TAT, tracking number, recipient, redelivery, branch pickup, rush, dispute, complaint, tampered card, fraud, other).
- Context fetch — pulls order, carrier, delivery history from EDMS.
- Response — drafts a contextual, empathetic, policy-compliant response.
- Action or escalate — either resolves directly (e.g. quotes TAT), executes an action (e.g. triggers a redelivery via API), or hands off to a human with the case pre-logged in D-365.
Tech stack
| Layer | What’s used |
|---|---|
| Models | Conversational: GPT-4o / Claude Sonnet. Transcription: Whisper. |
| Memory | Short-term: conversation. Long-term: customer SOP / FAQ in vector DB. |
| Tools (MCP) | EDMS lookup, D-365 ticket create, CCM communication trigger, BDO core banking (read-only for auth). |
| Telephony | SIP trunking to BDO’s IVR provider. |
| Guardrails | PII masking in logs; profanity filter; refusal to confirm card details on call. |
| Evals | Scenario-based — happy path per intent, adversarial caller, edge cases (caller hangs up mid-auth, etc.). |
Eval metrics (current)
Placeholder: Need current numbers from BDO deployment lead. Suggested fields: accuracy by intent, mean latency, % resolved without handoff, customer CSAT.
Lessons learned
Placeholder: Need input from BDO deployment team. What surprised us? What did we underestimate? What would we do differently?
Source decks & recordings
- BDO Unibank deck, “Call Handling: Shipsy Agent ‘Clara’ + Customer Executive” section
- Clara video walkthrough: CLARA YouTube link
- See BDO case study for end-to-end engagement context
Changelog
- 26 May 2026: Initial draft from BDO deck.