Transforming Utility Customer Service: Embracing the Future with Chatbot Innovation

Instead of providing lengthy FAQ content, delight your customers with a Q&A Chatbot that converts FAQs to conversions. Boost net new revenue by approaching prospects based on their intent and propensity to apply for new connections, pricing modifications, and more. Increase conversions by guiding them with self-service or assisted service during every stage of the acquisition and application process. Very useful service particularly if you have limited experience in the business of renting property. But the focus on using AI in these capacities means most utilities are still experimenting with AI at the “surface level,” said Raj Chudgar, a consultant for data center provider EdgeConneX. Although ChatGPT intensified public awareness of generative AI in recent months, the technology itself has been around in various forms for at least three years, Ross said.

With SEW’s smart customer service chatbot, virtual agents and live chat services, energy and water providers can establish deeper and stronger customer relationships and drive digital self-service. How many of us have had our questions answered instantly while interacting with chatbots? On contrary, imagine the time when we needed to check our utility bills if it did not land in our mailbox in time. Bots have invaded many aspects of our lives and utility interaction is just one of them. They are intelligent enough to answer any standard question, while at the same time they are smart enough to direct you to a live agent for the complex ones. Here, we can understand the concept of Machine Learning (ML), which trains the bots.

For example, do you want to make service available through multiple channels? As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, training large language models in different languages presents both challenges and opportunities. While many language models exist, ensuring high-quality user experiences across diverse languages is a priority.

You can use the templates directly to launch the chatbot even faster, or to use them as an inspiration for your own chatbot building. A French provider of bottled gas, such as liquefied petroleum gas, butane, and propane, Butagaz has over 4 million customers. Like navigating through an automated phone system, customers can select from a series of options, giving them the power to choose their own journey. The utility industry has undergone significant changes in recent years, and customer expectations have evolved. Energy-industry clients recognise the need to prioritise customer needs and enhance the overall experience in competitive deregulated markets.

Features of Energy & Utility Chatbots

Spanish startup Whenwhyhow develops a behavioral customer data platform (CDP). It provides customer-mindset analytics and actionable AI-based digital empathy to improve loyalty, reducing churn. The startup’s chatbot maps customer’s online behavior and interacts with them when an opportunity comes up, as well as predicts the customer’s water or electricity demand and offers deals accordingly. It further allows utility services to cross-sell other plans to existing customers based on their interactions.

AI chatbots for energy suppliers and power companies are designed to handle these surplus customer demands to lighten customer service agents load. Due to advanced process flows achieved with the help of technologies like machine learning and natural language processing, chatbots have the chatbots for utilities ability to monitor systems and meet customer expectations. A study conducted by Tata Consultancy Services, reports that 0.53% of average company revenue of the utilities are expected to be invested in AI. The investments in AI have shown cost savings and revenue improvement in business.

The Secret Ingredients to Manage Support Cases Successfully

Appointment-taking can be automated by connecting the chatbot with the scheduling system to automatically offer a suitable appointment to the customer without the intervention of any agents. However, the most advanced capabilities of current chatbots can go above and beyond. By incorporating Blicker’s chatbot, many customer interactions can be available 24/7 and handled in automated and efficient ways. Empowers agents to quickly resolve customer issues across voice, video, chat, and messaging channels. [24]7 Agent Services is the leading provider of BPO solutions to global Fortune 500 clients, offering highly-skilled chat, messaging, voice, and email agents. Better identify customers likely to surface complaints or issues and then intervene for a timely resolution, steering customers to the best escalation channel for their intent.

Every time the company received a complaint about this issue, they had to arrange a staff visit to the location to understand the issues. It becomes difficult for the customer to manage countless unorganized bills of the utilities sector. As a result, customers struggle to review utilities bill, modify account details, and analyse pending payments. For instance, when a customer needs clarification on their billing amount, they need to look up the customer care number or an email address to get in touch with the concerned person.

Exelon plans to launch it soon, allowing customers to use a variety of messaging platforms and digital assistants to ask billing and outage questions. IVAs with conversational AI can be trained to do more complicated tasks than a traditional IVR, partly because an IVA can pick up on the cadence and tone of a customer’s voice. This technology uses artificial intelligence (AI) and other automation technologies to communicate with customers via chat, automating routine tasks and providing quick and convenient support. As utilities look to enhance customer service and optimise operations, chatbots have become a critical tool.

They will be able to perform functions beyond “chatting,” with options for processing payments and other higher-level functions. Utilities can plan for these improvements even as they take immediate next steps toward chatbot integration. Create a development timeline that allows plenty of time for planning and testing. The planning process should include input from a variety of company departments, as well as customers.

Automate Customer Support with JennyBot

Learn how GetJenny builds partnerships to bring chatbots to new industries. AI already benefits the energy sector in many ways, from market price prediction to smart grid fault detection. For example, General Electric estimates that AI will enhance wind power production by 20% and generate around $50 billion more value for the wind industry.

Advancements in safety measures, transparency, and responsible AI development will lead to even more refined and reliable language models. Research efforts will also focus on enhancing reasoning capabilities, enabling longer chains of reasoning and improving story generation. Additionally, innovations in image generation will enable the creation of more visually captivating and engaging content. In terms of products, user interactions and experiences will be at the forefront of Meta’s endeavors, with the launch of new and exciting features to meet the evolving needs and expectations of users. The financial firm is reportedly in the process of developing a novel AI system that determines “dissatisfaction data” in real time during customer service interactions using machine learning (ML) capabilities. Exelon looks at a chatbot as part of a larger technology strategy, not a standalone innovation.

The AI model could calculate the bill based on usage data, generate the bill, and even send it to the customer, significantly reducing the manual effort required. For example, an electric utility could use Chat-GPT to analyze weather data and predict potential power outages. The utility could then take preventive measures to minimize the outage and inform affected customers in advance, improving customer satisfaction.

These channels provide the interface for chatbots in the same way the web browser does for web apps. And in today’s market, competition from other providers encourages utility companies to use conversational AI to rise to the expectations of their customers. Two-way SMS messaging can help connect utility companies with their customers in order to alert them to disruption updates, let them know about upcoming offers, or even send personalized messages about their accounts. Ideas are endless and can be implemented specifically to address the needs of each individual utility company. Help With Relocating— As customers move out, they need to fill out several forms to declare they are logging out of one place and logging into another.

Furthermore, Blicker stands out as it has the ability to handle both text and image inputs, which is not a common feature in all chatbots. Blicker can be described as a hybrid chatbot with elements of both rule-based and AI-driven approaches. The conversation flow in Blicker is primarily decision-tree-based, representing the rule-based aspect. However, when it comes to responding to meter images, Blicker employs AI-based techniques, indicating the integration of AI capabilities within the chatbot’s functionality. When evaluating chatbot options for the utility industry, it’s crucial to assess your company’s specific needs and objectives.

• Transform your customer service team with a surge of automated support from AI chatbot technology.
• AI-powered chatbots for service and utility companies are the ideal solution to enhance the quality of customer service and digitize repetitive processes without compromising the customer experience.
• A chatbot can easily deliver a few seconds first response time and similar resolution time.
• From helping users plan their travel itineraries to offering customer support for businesses, chatbots have found application in varied domains.

Customers quickly get the answers to the questions they ask, and with no room for error. The utilities sector is increasingly implementing WhatsApp chatbots in order to streamline its customer experience and automate many service offerings. The company created an AI-powered chatbot that helped its customers ask several questions and understand the information related to their utility bills and outages.

This improves the overall customer experience and helps to build trust and loyalty. By offering a convenient and reliable customer service solution, chatbots can improve the overall customer experience and satisfaction in the utility industry. In our rapidly changing technological landscape, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has seen significant advancements in recent years.

• As customers are kept up to date on when, where, and for how long outages may occur (via personalized voice or SMS notifications), they are more likely to retain confidence and trust in their utility company.
• Customers can ask for exactly what they want and get an immediate response because IVAs can understand caller intent.
• For instance, a water utility company could use Chat-GPT to analyze data from its water distribution network.
• And, they want to do it in their preferred mobile interface, not just by navigating to a company-specific app.

An example of how helpful these can be is seen with the American Red Cross’s chatbot, Clara, which assists people during disasters by offering vital information quickly. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. This move towards using AI for emergency communication means people can get the help they need anytime, anywhere. Check out our blog post to learn more about how AI is changing the way we handle emergencies in the utility sector. That microservices and customer front-end is built on Oracle Mobile Cloud service.

Automates the management of answers to frequently asked questions, consultation of consumption, invoicing dates… It provides accurate and quick responses, ensuring a hassle-free experience in resolving queries. Our chatbot is designed to handle these types of interactions efficiently. It not only identifies and prioritizes incidents and complaints, but also quickly refers them to a specialized agent. It guarantees fast and effective attention to solve problems as a matter of priority. Conversational AI chatbots become your automated sales and service solution.

Consider a utility company that uses Chat-GPT to create simulations of emergency situations for its staff. Employees can interact with these simulations, improving their problem-solving skills and readiness for real-life emergencies. By analyzing customer behavior, the AI model can generate insights that help utilities design targeted marketing campaigns. Consider a utility company that uses Chat-GPT to monitor changes in environmental regulations. The AI model could alert the company about any updates, ensuring compliance and avoiding potential penalties.

They can access their account for energy assessments, payments, meter setup and checks, bill download, power usage, and more, and they can be notified about any service disruptions. With both electricity and natural gas offers, they have millions of customers around the world. In order to answer thousands of requests per day, Naturgy implemented Pepe, a natural language-based chatbot that understands users’ requests and provides the most accurate answer. Energize your business and customer relationships with the power of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and AI-powered agents. [24]7.ai solutions let you support your customers whenever they want it and on their device of choice.

Employing bots in place of live agents saves a lot of money and time for the utilities. Making such shifts to technological aids have resulted in operational efficiencies. Several problems have been solved with such invasions, such as handling annoyed customers with quick resolution to their issues.

Get Free Chatbot to Your Website in 30 minutes

[24]7 Target helps brands to design and deliver personalized and targeted experiences across devices and channels through dynamic predictive messages and creatives. [24]7.ai Engagement Cloud delivers superior omnichannel experiences by blending AI and human intelligence to discover, predict and resolve consumer intents. Create milestones that will help you evaluate what constitutes a “successful” program. Consider surveying customers to get a clear understanding of their experience.

Reducing the staff in call centers and thus, reducing the operational costs, understanding common concerns of the customers, etc. Gaining insights on customer expectations and behavior acts as a pearl in the ocean. This lays down the path of strategic business decisions and aids in defining ways to improve customer service. As the chatbot collects more data about customer questions, it can be retrained to help customers in new ways, recognize intent faster, and deflect increasingly high-order service requests away from the human support team. Thanks to machine learning, the chatbots are constantly learning new customer phrases and recognizing context faster, resulting in their being able to provide answers more quickly and to more topics. Additionally, the live agent can also route the customer back to the chatbot for more information if appropriate.

Besides, most of the processes including handling utility bills, payment options, and promotional offers involve customer communication and can be automated. Therefore, startups develop chatbots to work in parallel with human agents to resolve both simple and complex customer inquiries. “I don’t want to call up the utility, they take away a lot of time from my day,” said an annoyed utility customer. Due to large call volumes, utility customer care lacks the efficiency of answering customer queries in a brief time.

Virtual assistants powered by AI are becoming increasingly popular in the utility industry, allowing customers to interact with companies more efficiently and engagingly. These AI chatbots use natural language processing and machine learning to understand customer intent and respond in a human-like way. They can assist with a range of tasks, from answering billing questions to helping customers monitor their energy usage. To keep up with these demands, utility companies are increasingly embracing chatbots – computer programs that employ artificial intelligence and natural language processing to simulate human conversation. Chatbots offer utilities the ability to deliver prompt and convenient support to customers, automate repetitive tasks, and enhance the overall user experience.

Set Sail Software develops Customer Center Chatbots

Built to empower utility customers, SEW’s customer service chatbot, virtual agents and live chat capabilities help streamline operations and set up automated workflows to cover a multitude of industry use cases. Leverage conversational AI to improve your customer service for energy services. Offer up-to-date information on energy pricing or promote your energy consumption app. GetJenny chatbots help you reach more visitors on your website and close new contracts thanks to RPA integrations with your customer relationship management software. That’s why Neoenergia, part of Iberdrola, a major utility company operating around the world, decided to implement natural language understanding chatbots through WhatsApp to assist their customers.

The bot can be programmed to perform all of the following tasks, making the process smoother, efficient, and satisfying. With the utilities chatbot on WhatsApp, customers can simply type in their queries and get instant responses to their issues. A WhatsApp chatbot can respond to different questions with relevant user information from your database. Integrate a chatbot for utilities on the channels your customers prefer to provide an omnichannel experience in conversational channels.

Blicker’s Chatbot allows for customised messaging that matches your brand’s tone of voice and visual branding. “Artificial intelligence is critical for the bank” and “critical to our company’s future success,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said, according to a Bloomberg report last Wednesday (June 21). That’s why it should be no surprise that JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the U.S. as well as the biggest bank in the world by market capitalization, is so keen on the technology’s ability to provide value. Chat-GPT can analyze large amounts of data to generate accurate demand forecasts.

Via chatbots, without any complicated process, they can simply carry out the handover process through chatbots. Chatbots can ask for certain information necessary for the relocation, like the old meter readings, the handover dates, customer information, etc. After collecting the data, it can then notify the competent bodies of the alterations.

Thirty-nine percent of energy sector companies have dedicated teams and budgets for generative AI, compared to a global, all-industry average of 40%, according to the survey results. Here are just a few of the added benefits that chatbots and artificial intelligence can add to your field service organization. Online messaging should include what to expect when they click customer care links. Inform customers through regular channels such as bill inserts, newsletters, and social media.

It uses AI to handle seasonal call surges and answers customers’ questions accurately and in a personalized manner. Moreover, it shifts the customers from chat to live calls, if needed, for the best customer service experiences. And third, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning capabilities are advancing quickly, making smart chatbots relevant and practical. With AI powered chatbots, organizations can finally deliver convenience and personalization that customers prefer. Customers will increasingly notice the difference between companies that have true AI-powered learning apps and those that don’t. Increasing consumer expectations, aging infrastructure, and disruptive technologies are all changing the utility sector as we know it today.

The next step in expanding that relationship is offering accessibility across a plurality of devices and starting points. Given the current climate of deregulation, it’s also conceivable that competition between utilities will increase even more in the coming years. In that scenario, faster, more satisfying customer service will absolutely be a key distinguisher that sets the most attractive, customer-friendly utilities apart from the rest. Whether it is a change of invoice to paper, a change of ownership or a change of payment address. Improve your customer satisfaction rate by up to 40% with delightful experiences across channels.

The true power of Exelon’s chatbot is that it will connect to long-running IT systems that contain the customer data and operations data needed to make responses meaningful. Surprised that an electric utility is on the cutting edge of chatbot innovation? You shouldn’t be, since it’s not the industry you’re in that drives what customers expect. An AI chatbot can handle hundreds of conversations simultaneously and won’t break a sweat. Heavy investments in infrastructure and operations in the utilities sector often tend to put customer service in the backseat. Utility companies have long relied on traditional call centers to meet customer service needs.

Through self-meter reading, Blicker’s Chatbot unlocks the power of automatic data capturing from customer-submitted photos. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and ensures accurate billing information. Despite the advancements in large language models, several challenges persist. One of these challenges is factuality hallucination, where the model generates information that may not be entirely accurate or reliable. Another challenge is the lack of recency, as language models struggle to access real-time information without continuous training, which can be resource-intensive. Addressing these challenges requires ongoing research and innovation to ensure that language models consistently provide high-quality, current, and factually accurate responses.

The Fortune 100 company works across the energy industry in generation, sales, and transmission. With six utilities including Atlantic City Electric, BGE, ComEd,  Delmarva, PECO and  Pepco, Exelon has the delivers electricity and natural gas to about 10 million customers across the East Coast and in Illinois. A new feature that customers are becoming increasingly aware of—is how well their utility company encourages energy conservation.

Chatbots are not the only application area of AI but also the insights derived from the analytics of consumer data are a big treasure for the utility business. All this combined helps utilities to build business strategies targeted to create delightful customer experiences. Alternatively, for utility companies desiring a combination of structured responses and AI capabilities, hybrid chatbots offer a versatile solution. These hybrid chatbots integrate rule-based and AI-driven approaches, allowing for personalised interactions while maintaining control and accuracy. These chatbots can discern the context and intent of a question before generating answers, leveraging natural language processing to respond to more complex inquiries.

YTK experienced this first hand during the first COVID-19 wave in Spring 2020. They experienced 75,000 service requests in their chat service by the end of May 2020, more that double their annual chat volume in 2019 at 41,000 chat conversations. For instance, as soon as the chatbot receives an outage-related complaint, it can fetch information from the internal system and update the customer of the current status. This reduces the overall execution time, thereby improving customer satisfaction.

Ice storms, frozen pipes, hurricanes, and other calamities create massive, but semi-predictable, increases in service calls. Ensuring every customer is supported in a timely manner during their time of need is essential to good business. See how Ambit automates customer service at scalewhile reducing costs and generating revenue. To make you benefit from JennyBot faster we have prepared Energy Sector chatbot templates.