How AI is powering support services for EDF employees

| minute read
World leader in low-carbon energy generation EDF wanted an innovative tech solution to ease pressure on IT support teams while also boosting service quality. AMY was the answer.

Digitalising a low-carbon leader 

EDF is one of the world’s largest electricity-generating companies, with more than 167,000 employees serving some 38.5 million customers around the world. 

It is a world leader in low-carbon energy generation, with 91% of its energy generation free from carbon emissions. 

EDF Group is committed to a major digital transformation agenda and is seeking to leverage technology to improve its operational performance, financial efficiency and help it achieve its sustainability goals. 

EDF has some 120,000 administrative staff throughout France with all computer support needs managed by the EDF’s IT support services via a dedicated team based in Roanne. 

AMY has proven her effectiveness. We are delighted with the results. We have streamlined the work of the operators and now offer users support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Thibaud Brisson

DSIT EDF

Faster, more responsive IT support 24/7 

EDF’s IT team, a long-time partner of Sopra Steria, approached us with the goal of improving the service offered to callers, both in terms of the speed of response times and the availability of support offered to callers. 

EDF sought a solution that would tackle the most common category of problem - password resets - without incurring significant ongoing operational costs, and which would sit comfortably with the existing IT support system architecture. 

The Roanne team handles around 25,000 every month. Demand is not evenly spread throughout the day, meaning at high-demand peak times, there was much pressure on the team. 

Call handlers resolve all manner of IT challenges, from setting up printers to personalising computer settings through to managing modifications to email passwords, with this latter category alone representing some 23% of all IT enquiries. 

The challenge, therefore, was to ease pressure on the team, while simultaneously improving performance. 

Innovating to better support staff 

The core channel to deliver IT support is a telephone hotline, staffed during standard working hours. Telephone operators respond to queries and guide callers through the steps needed to resolve their challenge. 

Sopra Steria worked hand-in-hand with EDF’s IT team to analyse the challenge, conceptualise and deploy the solution into the existing IT support infrastructure. 

The solution was AMY, an artificial intelligence-powered natural language voicebot which can guide callers through all stages of the password reset process. 

The voicebot fits in perfectly with the established telephone hotline support architecture, meaning there is little change for users, and operates 24/7, dramatically increasing the quality of service offered by DSIT. 

AMY uses a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) tool, to create smooth and lifelike conversations with users levering the power of the latest Natural Language Understanding models that can accurately recognise intent and context, while also complying with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) governing the use of personal data. 

GDPR presented a significant challenge for the EDF-Sopra Steria team as GDPR evolved considerably during the solution development process. In order to comply with GDPR rules, no personal data other than voice data is recorded, limiting further analysis and personalisation by still ensuring the AI can learn and improve. 

New future, new functionalities

After an initial 5-month pilot stage, AMY was rolled out to all users in June 2022 and the results have already exceeded expectations. 

Almost a quarter of the inquiries are now handled by AMY, with 50% of these managed entirely by the voicebot, without any human intervention. This has streamlined the support process with 70% of inquiries now resolved during the first contact.  

It has enabled a more efficient use of resources, by cutting the IT support team workload by almost a quarter (23%), freeing up their time to handle higher-value tasks, such as resolving more complex IT problems. 

AMY has boosted EDF staff autonomy, empowering them to resolve their own IT issues, and although the conversations are anonymised to comply with GDPR, the voicebot is a huge success with users. 

Now the AMY architecture is in place, the possibilities are endless. AMY offers support exclusively in French, but other languages could easily be added, not to mention expanding the range of problem topics that AMY can resolve, with each additional functionality improving the service provided and decreasing the relative cost of development. 

  • 25,000 IT support inquiries per month
  • 1/4 reduction in the number of inquiries handled

This was a real partnership project, where we worked really closely with EDF in the co-construction and implementation of the voicebot and complying with the GDPR requirements. 

Fabrice Normand

Head of innovation and transformation - Sopra Steria

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