Helm and DStv go gold at 2023 Smarties

The MMA SA Smarties Awards for last year took place on 30 March 2023 in Johannesburg, honouring the most effective modern marketing in South Africa, and DStv Assist was recognised, receiving gold and bronze Smarties Awards on the night.

Helm backed their tag as Africa’s leading customer experience innovation experts by bagging a gold in the Customer Experience category, having co-created a bot-based solution for DStv that has changed the self-service game. The intelligent assistant has sent and received over 1.4 billion messages and helped over 1.2 million DStv customers every month since its launch in 2019.

Helm’s Client Product Partner, Arno van Hyssteen, is thrilled with the results. “At Helm, we believe the path to success is understanding the person on the other side of the screen. When Mutlichoice decided to eliminate the customer service queue, they turned to us to partner with them in making this vision a reality. It was a challenge we grasped with both hands and we are proud to be rewarded for our joint solution.”

With DStv’s understanding of their customers and Helm’s understanding of user behaviour, technology was used to radically simplify self-service for over a million people every month.

DStv’s self-service assistant was built using Helm Engine, an AI-powered conversational platform – the likes of which have received a lot of attention recently thanks to Chat GPT – that is smart enough to understand and reply to users thanks to Natural Language Understanding.

“Having gathered data and learnt language nuances from millions of unique users, DStv Assist completes tasks in a matter of seconds,” says Van Hyssteen.

Saret Marais, executive head of group digital enablement at Multichoice, along with her team, worked with Helm to develop the bot. “Our WhatsApp bot is one of the simplest and easiest ways for our customers to learn about our products and services and manage their DStv accounts. Together with Helm, we have been on a multi-year journey to make this the best customer experience possible and the high usage of this platform is testament to what we have achieved together.”

DStv Assist received Smarties Awards in the following categories:

• Gold – Creative: Customer Experience (CX)
  
• Bronze – Impact Media: Social Messaging, Chat Apps, Text Messaging

This continues Helm’s impressive run in recent years, having picked up gold, silver and bronze awards for the likes of LUMA Legal, the Covid-19 WhatsApp Bot, Smartstart Education Assistant and Supersonic (MTN) since 2020. The MMA SA Smarties acknowledge innovation, creativity and success by showcasing each year’s most effective mobile campaigns. This winning work inspires, educates and ultimately propels the industry forward.

If you’re wondering how DStv Whatsapp Bot has performed since launch, here are the stats:

• 1.2 million users per month (average)
  
• 4.7 million unique users in the last year
  
• 1.4 billion messages processed since launch

The DStv team Helm’s Client Product Partner Arno van Hyssteen and Renzo Zanetti (head of business development) with the DStv team.

About Helm

Formerly Praekelt Consulting, Helm has spent the last 20 years creating best-across-class products and services that have answered complex customer experience challenges. The team designs intelligent products and services that have helped Africa’s biggest brands turn messy customer realities into experiences they can’t live without. Its tiered product o ering combines tools, tech and expertise to meet the needs of any size business. To date, Helm has helped its clients to connect, converse with and convert over 500 million users across multiple markets, channels and languages. Clients include the likes of Absa, MTN, DStv, Makro and Dr. Oetker.