Innovative customer service:

Salzburg AG relies on smart chatbots and advanced analyses

Salzburg AG relied on the LEA chatbot to make customer service more efficient and meet digital requirements. As a strategic partner, valantic has been providing significant support in optimizing the web chat and ensuring an improved customer experience since 2019. With the solution developed on the Cognigy platform, Salzburg AG automates routine inquiries and relieves the burden on employees, who can then concentrate on more complex customer concerns.

Salzburg AG

The company

Salzburg AG is one of the most important energy and infrastructure companies in Austria and it plays a central role in the supply and development of the Salzburg region. As an innovative provider of services in the fields of energy, telecommunications, and transport, the company relies on state-of-the-art technologies to offer its customers first-class service and at the same time develop sustainable solutions.

Salzburg AG has positioned itself as a pioneer in the implementation of digital solutions and strives to optimize its customer service and set new standards in customer interaction in line with its strategic ambition: to be a customer hero. The focus is not only on ensuring reliable and efficient supply, but also on enhancing customer experience by using innovative technologies.

The challenge

Salzburg AG had to make its customer service more efficient and satisfy increasing digital requirements, which is why it decided to develop the LEA chatbot.

Consulting approach

valantic has been Salzburg AG’s strategic partner since 2019, helping the company optimize the digital assistant’s webchat to create an improved customer experience. In addition, as Cognigy’s partner, valantic always provides an expert contact person for further analytics developments and support for new Conversational AI projects.

Customer benefits and solution

By developing LEA based on the Cognigy platform, Salzburg AG was able to increase customer service efficiency, automate routine requests, and enable employees to focus on more complex issues.

The challenge

Efficient, digital customer service

Salzburg AG technicians | Success Story Salzburg AG - Innovative customer service with smart chatbot

Salzburg AG was faced with the task of making its customer service more efficient and at the same time satisfying increasing digital requirements. To meet these challenges, the company developed the LEA chatbot, which is based on the powerful Cognigy platform. LEA is supposed to be able to answer questions about the company’s wide range of products and services automatically and around the clock. The central requirement was to find a solution that could not only effectively manage the large number of customer requests, but also be developed and optimized continuously.

In addition to creating such AI projects, other major topics such as user interface (UI) and analysis played an important role. This was where valantic came into play. valantic took over the tasks of optimizing the UI of LEA’s webchat, developing new functions, and providing a custom-tailored solution for Salzburg AG and its customers.

Sarah Haider - Digitalmanagerin bei der Salzburg AG | Success Story Salzburg AG - Innovativer Kundenservice mit smarten Chatbot

Sarah Haider
Digital Manager Conversational AI at Salzburg AG

”valantic is a reliable partner that brings many years of Conversational AI experience and is a competent Cognigy partner. In this way, valantic ensures that professional support and implementation of the diverse AI projects that we are considering is possible and leads to success.“

The solution

LEA: More than just a chatbot

Salzburg AG first came into contact with Cognigy as part of an Innovation Challenge. The smart bot LEA was developed based on the initial solution, and it soon became clear that LEA is far more than just a simple chatbot.

LEA processes over 8,000 sample records and can access more than 400 intents, which enables her to perform a wide range of voice and chat interactions. Customers now use LEA not just as a text chatbot, but also as a voice assistant for Alexa.

Salzburg AG is the first energy provider in Austria to integrate Large Language Models (LLM), also known as GPT, into its digital services. Since the beginning of 2024, the LEA digital assistance system has been working closely with GPT to answer customer inquiries about mobility services and energy consulting with greater precision. This has resulted in significantly improved responses. Further innovative AI integrations into LEA are already in the development phase.

LEA reduces the quantity of e-mails and phone calls

By using LEA, Salzburg AG and its customers have benefited from considerable efficiency gains. The bot handles routine requests and makes employees’ lives easier during peak times, especially after special campaigns, when customer volume increases sharply. Customers can use LEA to answer questions independently and she handles order processes for them, which has significantly reduced the number of emails and calls.

Ability to learn and customer insights

LEA stands for Learning Electronic Assistant, and she lives up to her name. LEA provides valuable insight into customer behavior and requirements, which will be incorporated into future developments of the bot. This learning process is essential for improving customer service and developing custom-tailored solutions.

The future of contact centers: Make employees’ lives easier, don’t replace them

For Salzburg AG and valantic it’s certain: It’s not about replacing employees with the chatbot but freeing them up to concentrate on more complex matters. LEA handles requests that do not require the attention of a human employee. This division of tasks is important for the efficiency and quality of customer service.

Interface between chatbot and the contact center

An important aspect is the integration of LEA into the company’s entire process workflow. The chatbot acts as the first point of contact, but seamlessly routes requests to the contact center as needed. This ensures a smooth handover of customer issues, so that every customer receives the appropriate support – whether from the bot or from human employees.

LEA as a mirror image of her developers

LEA’s personality also reflects some of her developer Sarah Haider’s values and ways of working. This gave her an empathetic, solution-oriented, and attentive manner, which is reflected in her interactions with customers. The goal was to design LEA in such a way that she is simultaneously efficient and sympathetic.

Findings from the LEA project: Evolution instead of revolution

The LEA project has shown that a chatbot is an evolutionary product – it is constantly developing. A bot like this not only needs technical support, but also someone who understands communication. It’s about speaking the language of the company, but above all the language of the customer. The key to success lies in starting small, striving for perfection and then expanding bit by bit.

Zapfsäule für E-Autos | Success Story Salzburg AG - Innovativer Kundenservice mit smarten Chatbot

Training and development: The key to success

A decisive factor for the success of LEA is continuous training. A chatbot does not maintain itself – it must be regularly fed and trained with new data and conversation flows must be redesigned. Not only technical optimization is crucial, but also the company’s communicative approach.

A lot of time was invested in the development of LEA’s persona. She is like an employee of Salzburg AG and significantly shapes the positive customer experience with her natural language and likeable behavior. A professional conversation design and the use of clear, understandable language are decisive factors in dealing with customers’ concerns effectively and reliably.

Success Story Salzburg AG - Innovativer Kundenservice mit smarten Chatbot (2)

Sarah Haider
Digital Manager Conversational AI at Salzburg AG

”By planning to further improve LEA with advanced analytics and AI, we see great potential for offering our customers even more efficient and personalized service options. valantic develops exclusive management dashboards that help us analyze key metrics and make strategic decisions based on real user data. “

Future plans: From e-commerce to advanced analytics

In addition to the connection between e-commerce and chatbots, Salzburg AG plans to work with valantic to make LEA even more versatile and data-driven in the future. There is great potential in the integration of an advanced analytics solution based on Microsoft Power BI. This will give Salzburg AG a deep understanding of user behavior.

valantic develops exclusive management dashboards that help us analyze key metrics and interactions of the service bot in real time. These dashboards provide an extensive overview of customer behavior and help us make data-based decisions in order to continuously optimize the LEA chatbot. Thanks to this advanced analytics solution, Salzburg AG will focus on customer requirements in the future and further improve its service.

Overall, the goal is to integrate LEA not only into classic customer service, but also into other business areas and to use analytics and other AI integrations to become even smarter and more efficient.

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Martin W. Vierrath

Senior Sales Manager

valantic Business Analytics

Salzburg AG relies on smart chatbots and advanced analyses

Salzburg AG

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