Every day we see companies renewing their brands and their ways to get closer to their clients. The Utilities Sector is no different, and companies are increasingly interested in introducing AI bots in their contact channels.
Discover how beneficial it can be for your water, gas, and energy companies to adopt Artificial Intelligence chat and email bots.
What is the Utilities Sector?
We’re completely dependent on this sector, whether at home, at work, or on the street. Consumers know this and so do the companies that provide these services. That’s why it’s so important to offer the best possible service.
How to Improve the Utilities Sector with AI?
It’s crucial to maintain a good functioning and always have the best performance, both in terms of matter and customer service.
For a company to succeed, it’s necessary to put the customer at the center and keep them satisfied. For this reason, the investment in bots for Customer Service in this type of company has been growing.
Consumers are no longer willing to wait and demand an immediate response. Even better if it’s through messages. According to a Salesforce study, 68% of users prefer to use chatbots because of their response speed.
What Are AI Bots?
As the name indicates, AI Bots are bots (short for “robots”) that have in their base Artificial Intelligence.
Contrary to what one may think, these automation systems are specifically related to human language. Through these, it’s possible the communication between humans and robots.
According to Forbes’ definition, AI bots are systems programmed with NLP and Machine Learning technologies. They can learn by themselves, through the commands they receive, and thus improve their performance.
What Do AI Bots Do?
Companies increasingly use these systems with AI to optimize their Customer Care services and improve their teams’ performance.
Besides being used for consumer support, AI bots can be implemented in companies’ core, working to streamline internal processes, such as Human Resources, among others.
Learn more about internal chatbots in What Can Internal Chatbots Do for your Company?
The Different Types of AI Bots
There’re several possible distinctions between bots. Some can be made taking into account their complexity and intelligence and others related to their functions.
Complexity and Intelligence
The most complex bots are mostly associated with Artificial Intelligence. These are, as we have already mentioned, the bots that can learn by themselves, automatically.
On the other hand, there are the non-intelligent and, consequently, the most basic conversational bots. These systems don’t resort to Artificial Intelligence, and their interactions with users are all previously programmed.
Different Functions
Within the Bots with Artificial Intelligence, some aspects distinguish them and therefore perform different functions.
Chatbots
The chatbots, the most known, are, as well, the most used by companies. They answer the most frequent questions, saving this repetitive work to the contact center employees.
Moreover, with the information they collect from conversations with users, they offer personalized attention 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
Email bots
The new trend that has emerged is the automation of the processing of emails received by companies.
When we think about email automation, we think about automatic marketing emails. However, these solutions that we talk about are related to the automation of emails received by the institutions’ contact centers.
The email bots are great options to speed up and optimize email categorization and routing to treatment departments. Also, they can ask customers for incomplete information and missing documents.
To learn more details about this fantastic solution, click here.
The Advantages of AI Bots in the Utilities Sector
As we mentioned earlier, companies in the Utilities Sector can greatly benefit from introducing AI bots into their services, whether for the public or internally.
Increasing the Means of Communication with Consumers
More and more customers want to contact the brands that serve them, and with this comes the need for companies to offer these means of contact.
These means can be via communication applications such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, or via email. The important thing is to provide various ways of contact and leave it up to the customer to choose which one to use.
Increase Customer and Employee Satisfaction
Your customers’ satisfaction level will surely increase when they find that you offer them a 24-hour service, every day of the year. You will be wherever your users are everywhere, anytime.
With this automation of interactions, you allow only the most complex requests to your Customer Care team. This enables your team to perform better for the most demanding processes.
Bots allow the automation of simple and repetitive processes that are easily programmable.
Facilitates Several Processes
Implementing a bot in your company speeds up the telephone processes call. For example, telling the readings or report water or electricity breakdowns or shortages.
Imagine giving the option of a simple automatic reading to the company’s system by sending a photo of the meter reader. This process is possible due to the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology, which automates the reading and processing of data contained in images.
Besides, they can help with payment issues, such as assigning new payment references. They can even enable direct payment through bot integrations.
Visor.ai Case in the Utilities Sector
Visor.ai solutions are all cloud-based, low-code, and modular. These three factors make their implementation very easy, fast, and integrable in any platform that the client uses or intends to use.
One application case of the chat solution in a company in the Utilities Sector was Galp Energia.
It was with a bot Visor.ai that they were able to satisfy this need. Implemented in the company’s WhatsApp, any employee could get up-to-date information about the pandemic situation, as well as prevention indications.
Learn more about Galp Energia’s internal chatbot here.
A bot can be the easiest and most cost-effective solution for your company to make itself known in the marketplace. Technological innovation is an increasingly differentiating factor and a very relevant one for consumers.
