Octopus Energy's new AI customer service assistant, Arlo, has received a stamp of approval from customers during a three-month trial. Built in partnership by Octopus’ tech team and Kraken, Arlo helps answer straightforward customer emails, including questions about tariff renewals, payment dates and account details.
Arlo Handles Thousands of Emails Weekly
During the trial, Arlo handled around 8,000 emails a week – 4% of all customer emails received by the energy supplier in the UK. Customers liked the new support, with Arlo achieving a 76% customer satisfaction score, beating comparable responses from human advisors, which scored 72%.
Focus on Routine Enquiries
Arlo only deals with routine enquiries and works within strict guardrails. It never handles vulnerable customers, sensitive cases or complex complaints, which always go straight to experienced members of the customer service team. By taking care of simple enquiries, Arlo gives Octopus’ energy specialists more time to focus on helping customers through more complex situations, solving difficult problems and providing expert human support when it is needed most.
Customer Feedback Overwhelmingly Positive
Early feedback from customers has been overwhelmingly positive. Kelly, a customer from Wales, said: “I was very impressed with the response I received, especially as it was a bot who responded! It was very accurate information.” Brenda, a customer from Cheshire, said: “My query was answered very quickly and told me exactly what I needed to know.”
Octopus Energy's Vision for AI
Ashley Firth, Deputy CTO at Octopus Energy, said: "Too many chatbots have been built to keep customers away from people. We wanted to build one that does the opposite. Arlo deals with the simple questions quickly and effectively which enables our energy specialists to focus on the conversations where their empathy and experience make the biggest difference. The real opportunity with AI isn’t replacing people, it’s removing the repetitive things that get in the way of them doing their best work. We’ve spent years building AI that supports our teams, and Arlo is another step in that journey. Seeing customers already rate its responses so highly gives us confidence we’re building technology that genuinely helps."
