Salzburg AG's 'LEA' AI Agent on Cognigy Saves 2,500 Calls a Month, Reaches 89% User Satisfaction

Salzburg AG, an Austrian green-tech utility serving more than 450,000 customers, deployed "LEA" (Learning Electronic Assistant), an AI agent built on Cognigy, now part of NiCE, and enhanced with Cognigy Knowledge AI, that now handles 400+ customer service topics, manages over 160,000 messages annually, and saves around 2,500 calls per month — driving more than 58% user growth and an 89% customer satisfaction rate. "Our customer service team truly appreciates the collaboration with the Digital Chat AI Agent. It efficiently handles routine inquiries and precisely manages orders, saving us around 2,500 calls each month," said Sarah Haider, Digital Manager Conversational AI at Salzburg AG. "This reduction in call volume allows our agents to dedicate more time to engaging with customers who have complex requests." The deployment was driven by scale and ambition. Salzburg AG saw conversational AI as a way to alleviate pressure on its customer service team, integrate up- and cross-selling into digital channels, and let human agents focus on complex issues — all while positioning the company as an early adopter of futureproof technology in the green-tech sector. Cognigy was first selected in 2018 as the platform for LEA. The assistant was later upgraded with Cognigy Knowledge AI to deliver more context-sensitive responses, and in 2024 Salzburg AG integrated GPT into the orchestration layer, making LEA's answers more specific and context-aware. Technically, LEA combines Cognigy's conversational AI platform and Knowledge AI with generative AI, orchestrated with GPT, to understand intents and respond. The agent hands conversations over to live agents when a request exceeds its scope, while LEA's personality and avatar reflect Salzburg AG's brand — competent and humorous, with a self-confident, charmingly cheeky demeanor that takes each request seriously. At operational scale, LEA now addresses over 400 different customer service topics, manages more than 160,000 messages each year, saves roughly 2,500 customer service contacts per month, and processes more than 4,000 orders from start to finish — including public transport ticket purchases made directly through the chat interface.