Working with IBM, Endesa, the largest Spanish energy power company, has transformed its call center into an AI contact center to help deliver quick and personalized customer service.
Image: IBM headquarters in Armonk, New York. Photo: courtesy of Treesmittenex/Wikipedia.org.
Using IBM (NYSE: IBM) Watson Assistant, Endesa built a virtual assistant to enable clients to get immediate answers to their inquiries, and empowering call center agents to focus on more complex requests and selling products and services.
As customers of utilities providers expect quick, personalized and convenient services, the top priority for contact center executives is to improve the customer experience. In this context, early adopters of artificial intelligence (AI) technology report improved customer service as a top outcome as reported in the IBM study “The cognitive advantage global market report”.
Since the launch of its Watson assistant in July 2018, Endesa’s overall client satisfaction has increased 4.5%. As more of its customers use it, the system learns more about their needs and questions that are most frequently asked and will continue to improve the customer experience over time.
Through their phones, customers can ask the assistant to handle transactional requests like providing bill duplicates, changing bank account information or paying a bill. Hosted on the IBM Cloud and integrated with Endesa’s back-office processes, the assistant is designed to easily scale both in functionality and customer reach. Currently managing 40,000 customer calls per month, it is anticipated to soon handle 90,000 calls monthly and plans to add additional transactions like changing the contracted power, modifying the contract holder and even the supplier.
Endesa´s contact center manages around 10 million calls a year with human agents. Many of these calls are routine requests which can be delegated to a virtual assistant, that is capable of responding appropriately to tone-of-voice, enabling live agents to focus on more complex tasks and selling.
“We found that our live agents are asked with the same routine, non-complex questions 40% of their time. Our assistant built on IBM Watson gives customers 24/7 access to resolve these issues and more importantly, it allows our human agents to focus on the questions that require more in-depth problem solving -improving our service to customers significantly,” says Endesa Innovation, Technology and Partners Director, Jorge Honorio Domínguez.
“As energy companies spur innovation and accelerate digital transformation journeys, there is incredible potential to use AI for these important projects. They need an AI platform that is ready to scale, provides industry-specific capabilities and can quickly and easily be embedded into an organization’s business process. With IBM Watson, Endesa is embracing AI to provide a superior experience to their customers,” says IBM Global Business Services Utilities Cognitive Leader, Anselmo Trillo.
Source: Company Press Release