Northern Gas Networks identified conversational AI as an opportunity for automation as part of their 2021 Digitalisation Strategy. NGN chose Filament CX as their chatbot platform and services partner. We proposed a phased approach that would prove the value of implementing chatbot technology by focussing on one high value use case initially and then expanding this across the business.
Colleague Care and IT support was chosen for phase 1 as the team receive a high volume of queries that could be answered by a chatbot. By responding to these queries quickly 24/7 the chatbot, known as KITT, gives the team more time to resolve the complex queries.
We introduced NGN to chatbot best practices, conversation design and worked with them to define the queries that the chatbot would handle. KITT was designed to guide staff through the most popular fixes to their IT issues and since go-live NGG has continued to add more fixes in response to real user’s queries. While designing KITT we identified an opportunity to improve the chatbot’s UX by by developing a custom integration with TOPdesk. Rather than just linking users to an online form, if KITT can’t resolve the user’s issue, it will collect the required information and submit a ticket to TOPdesk on the user’s behalf, handovering the issue to College Care.
KITT has been built on EBM and went live on NGN’s internal intranet known as myNGN in November 2021. In the initial two months, KITT understood over 90% of messages and continues to improved it’s responses with ongoing updates.
Through the implementation of this initial use case, we have established ways of working and laid solid foundations as we move forward with the implementation of more chatbots across multiple departments and use cases that are aligned to NGN’s Digitisation Strategy.
