EDF is the latest retailer to put its trust in artificial intelligence (AI) to boost its customer service offerings.
The energy company has announced that it will be implementing the Dynatrace platform to support its customer-facing services, including billing and account queries, meter reading submissions and online customer support engagements.
The move is part of EDF’s move to bring software development back in-house. EDF principal software engineer Steve Bowerman said the Dynatrace platform provides EDF with greater insights about customer behaviours, queries and concerns and allows the company to tailor its offerings accordingly.
“Before deploying Dynatrace, we didn’t have much insight into the performance of our digital services,” said Bowerman. “To innovate at speed while continuing to deliver the excellent standards of customer experience we aspire to, we realised we needed a more strategic approach to observability.
“We identified Dynatrace as the best solution because it enables us to bring all our data together on a single platform with precise answers and automation. This will transform the way our teams work by pointing towards where investing time in development work will deliver the greatest value to the business.”
He added: “Dynatrace will put us in a stronger position to realise the benefits of bringing software development in-house.
“We can innovate faster and improve the digital services that enable our customers to interact with us in new and more convenient ways. Ultimately, that’s what our transformation initiatives are all about – finding ways to make our customers’ lives easier through technology innovation and digital enablement.”
EDF is not the only retailer to utilise AI for its customer service offerings.
Octopus Energy’s Greg Jackson recently revealed that artificial intelligence has taken on the workload of 250 staff at the energy retailer within a matter of months.
Jackson said Octopus had begun experimenting with AI in December and by February they’d plugged it into their systems, initially allowing it to reply to a “handful” of customers emails.
The responses produced by the AI had delivered a higher satisfaction rating than trained staff – 80% versus 65% – and the programme was responding to more than a third of customers emails – the workload of around 250 people.
For more on the potential of AI in the energy sector, click here.