Essent, the largest energy company in the Netherlands with 2.5 million customers across its Essent and Energiedirect brands, has adopted an AI-first approach to customer service using NiCE Cognigy's conversational AI platform, according to a Cognigy case study. Essent handles around 3 million voice calls and 900,000 chats a year, and customer service representatives often had to ask a helpdesk of just seven senior staff for information, causing delays of up to three minutes per interaction. Keeping a large, frequently updated knowledge base usable across many contact teams was a core challenge.
Essent deployed four components. Cognigy Agent Copilot runs inside Microsoft Teams and is trained on more than 1,100 knowledge articles to assist representatives in real time. An AI voice agent collects customers' meter readings by phone four times a year. Intelligent routing directs incoming requests to the most suitable of 17 mission-based teams, distributing more than 500,000 chats and 3 million calls a year, and live chat conversations are automatically summarised and logged in CRM systems. All incoming chats are now handled by AI first.
The Agent Copilot automates 85% of the queries that previously went to the helpdesk and saves EUR 2 million a year. The meter-reading voice agent engaged 22,000 customers in a single two-week window with a 22% success rate, contributing EUR 240,000 in annual savings. Summarisation and CRM logging raised agent productivity from 4.2 to 4.7 chats per hour, and 55% of incoming chat conversations are now fully automated.
"By combining Agent Assist, Chat, and Voice AI, we've created a seamless, scalable support ecosystem," said Nina Kiemeneij, Product Owner Conversational AI at Essent, adding that the company has "automated around 55% of live chat conversations. Saving millions of euros annually."
Details
- City
- 's-Hertogenbosch
- Organization
- Essent
- Continent
- Europe
- Country
- Netherlands