Company: E.ON, Essen, Nordrhein-Westfalen
Company Description: The E.ON Group is one of Europe's largest operators of energy networks and energy infrastructure and a provider of innovative customer solutions for 50 million customers. Thus, we are decisively driving forward the energy transition in Europe and are committed to sustainability, climate protection, and the future of our planet.
Nomination Category: Besondere Unternehmensleistungen
Nomination Sub Category: Besondere Leistungen im Bereich Produktinnovation
 Nomination Title: Conversational AI Innovations @E.ON
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- Beschreiben Sie kurz die nominierte Organisation: ihre Geschichte und ihre bisherige Leistung (bis zu 200 Wörter):
Total 197 words used.
If we ask one of E.ON clients what they associate with their energy provider, the answer will probably include things like energy networks, power plants, meters and meter-readings. There is much more to E.ON, however, that might meet the eye from the outside perspective. The internal focus of the corporation, as defined in its global strategy, is on the three pillars of growth, digitalization, and sustainability. The second point is represented by a dedicated branch of the corporation – E.ON Digital Technology. The unit was formed back in 2001 and has since been responsible for the overall automation and streamlining of EON customer support and employees’ daily work. With 2K employees, EDT has developed numerous areas of expertise and has kept up with the most prominent technology trends, one of them being Conversational AI.
The first FAQ bot went live at E.ON in 2017, with each year since then opening a new chapter of innovation and growth. Today, the Conversational AI initiatives in the company are represented by smart digital agents, both chat- and voice-based, that benefit from the traditional machine learning capabilities, as well as integrations into third-party systems and live chat.
- Beschreiben Sie die Leistungen der Organisation seit dem 1. Juli 2020, die Sie der Jury vorstellen möchten (bis zu 250 Wörter):
Total 250 words used.
With the driving force to provide best customer experience – both to clients and employees – Conversational AI proved to be a fruitful field for innovations. [REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION]
The most impactful innovation has been the Bot Family concept – a skills-based approach towards bot-building, analogous to Alexa skills. It's based on the principle of modularity and refers to a family of bots which consists of one Master Bot and several Child Bots. Skills are various use cases – HR, IT-helpdesk [REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION] etc. Master Bot has general knowledge of all capabilities of the family, while child bots focus on specific skills. Master Bot acts as central information repository and redirects queries to the ‘responsible‘ child bot. From the user’s perspective the handover happens without a channel break and is completely undetectable. At the same time, Child Bots can be used as standalone agents within the company.
Other innovations include:
- Conversational Lineage report – tracking and visualizing which paths users take while travelling down the conversation tree of the digital agent to pinpoint most frequently triggered intents, user-experience gaps and conversation dead ends.
- Microsoft Teams and ServiceNow Integration – for seamless interaction with the ticketing platform of E.ON’s Global Service Desk from the chat window of IT-support bot on Teams.
- Stateful Callback Feature – introduced for voice bots so that users could resume their call from the place it was dropped off; the bot will remember user details and the state of the conversation.
- Erklären Sie, warum die Leistungen, die Sie hervorgehoben haben, einzigartig oder bedeutsam sind. Wenn möglich, vergleichen Sie die Leistungen mit den Leistungen anderer Akteure Ihrer Branche und/oder mit der bisherigen Leistung der Organisation (bis zu 250 Wörter):
Total 244 words used.
With around 100 business units and many of them using their own internal portals and shared folders, employees at E.ON and its daughter companies often struggled with finding necessary information, e. g. regarding authentication, payroll or IT. Conversational AI was introduced to solve this – create chatbots and voicebots that would be a one-stop shop for each topic, plus a contact point with support agents. Various innovations were implemented to ensure bots’ best performance – make them both efficient and user-friendly.
2020 was the biggest year in terms of scaling for Conversational AI – a real baby boom of chatbots. After first successful launches, many business units were eager to get onboard and automate their use cases. In the end, however, this created a problem similar to what we meant to solve initially – numerous chatbots for various topics and not knowing which one you need.
In 2022, we had to [REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION] rethink our approach – this time we put the user, i.e. E.ON employee, at the center of the solution and have thus arrived at the concept of Bot Family. Now whenever a colleague needs support with a certain topic, they would contact [REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION] through their unit’s preferred communication channel, and it will then match the intent across all Children, each of those having their own topic and NLU. Parent Bot acts as a centralized interface – with the unit’s branding and personality – that drastically simplifies information search.
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Total 118 words used.
Bot Family is an ambitious project and there have and will be challenges on the road of implementing the Bot Family Concept across the whole of E.ON. Most of them stem from E.ON’s internal structure and organization. Yet, some major milestones have already been achieved. [REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION]
To get a broader understanding of the Conversational AI projects and achievements at E.ON, please visit the attached links to magazine and conference features. [REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION]
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