How the power of generative AI can transform customer satisfaction in the energy and utilities industry

The energy and utilities (E&U) industry is undergoing a dynamic transformation. Driven by emerging technologies from smart grids to the integration of renewable energy sources, the landscape is evolving rapidly.

Generative AI (Gen AI) is poised to play a pivotal role in accelerating this shift, fostering innovation, efficiency, and new opportunities across industries worldwide. You can read about this transformation and more in our “Future of” series, here.

What effect will Gen AI have on E&U end customers?

Customer complaints are a longstanding challenge for E&U suppliers, particularly during peak seasons or service outages. A recent Ofgem report revealed troubling statistics about the service quality of 17 major UK energy suppliers. Customers often face chaotic experiences marked by inconsistent messaging, long wait times, and unresolved issues leading to frustration and dissatisfaction.

The surge in call volumes (some suppliers reported a 300% increase since 2018), combined with a shortage of experienced agents, complex regulatory issues, and missing root cause analysis reports, has overwhelmed support teams. This results in high complaint rates, declining customer satisfaction scores, and reputational damage.

How Gen AI can vastly improve customer interactions with E&U businesses

Gen AI is already transforming customer support by streamlining complaint resolution, enhancing personalization, and reducing staff turnover. Key use cases include:

• Automated bill summaries: Gen AI can generate clear, concise summaries of complex bills, enabling faster query resolution and empowering customer self-service.
• Contextual routing: By analyzing historical queries, Gen AI can match current issues with agents who have relevant expertise, improving resolution speed and satisfaction.
• Real-time knowledge assistance: Gen AI can interpret technical manuals and guides, presenting information in simple language to both customers and staff.
• Sentiment analysis and personalized responses: Gen AI can assess customer tone and emotional state across channels, tailoring responses to foster empathy and clarity.
• Predictive maintenance support: In IoT-enabled environments, Gen AI can predict service disruptions and proactively suggest preventative actions.
• Email summarization: Gen AI can extract key information from lengthy emails, allowing agents to quickly understand and address issues.
• Routine task automation: AI-powered chatbots can handle scheduling, payments, and FAQs using natural language.
• Error reduction and consistency: Gen AI ensures accurate, consistent information across agents, improving service quality.
• Operational insights: Gen AI enables better call center audits, agent coaching, and customer-agent matching, reducing average hold times and boosting productivity.

These improvements not only enhance customer satisfaction but also drive profitability and reduce agent attrition. Root cause insights from Gen AI can inform future system and process design, creating a cycle of continuous improvement.

As highlighted in the Capgemini Research Institute’s report Harnessing the value of generative AI: Top use cases across sectors, organizations are increasingly prioritizing Gen AI to elevate customer experience, with tools like ChatGPT becoming the preferred interface for product and service recommendations.

What agentic AI and embodied AI mean for the E&U industry

The next frontier is agentic AI, autonomous software agents that interact with their environment, gather data, and perform tasks to achieve defined goals. These agents leverage large language models (LLMs) to reason, act, and adapt dynamically.

In customer service, agentic AI can autonomously manage enquiries, request additional information, and resolve issues, sometimes even overriding standard procedures when necessary. This autonomy enhances customer satisfaction and allows human agents to focus on complex, high-value tasks.

Increasingly, we are also seeing the rise of embodied AI: AI systems integrated into physical or digital environments that can perceive, interact, and respond in real time. In the E&U context, embodied AI agents can be deployed in smart meters, grid management systems, and field service robotics to autonomously monitor, diagnose, and act on operational data. These agents combine Gen AI’s reasoning capabilities with sensor inputs and real-world feedback loops, enabling more adaptive and intelligent infrastructure.

Capgemini and Gen AI in the E&U industry

Generative AI presents a transformative opportunity for the E&U sector to transform customer experiences, optimize operations, and drive sustainable growth. However, successful adoption requires careful governance to mitigate risks and maintain control over AI processes.

Capgemini’s Generative AI for Customer Experience offering helps E&U companies unlock Gen AI’s potential by building tuned foundation models and navigating implementation complexities. By leveraging our global network of certified Gen AI for CX experts, we accelerate deployment of industry-specific use cases that deliver tangible business value.

With over 500 enterprise-ready use cases and demonstrators, and a track record of successful client engagements, we empower CxO leaders to drive high-impact transformation initiatives.

Gen AI is here to transform the customer satisfaction. Get in touch with us to learn how we can partner with you on your transformation journey.