How AI is Revolutionizing Customer Service: Real-World Success Stories from SoCal Edison and GreenShield

Reimagining Customer Engagement with AI

Customer engagement and operational efficiency have been identified as key innovation vectors for organizations implementing artificial intelligence strategies.

In harnessing that opportunity, teams from GreenShield and Southern California Edison are leveraging agentic AI, low-code tools and UiPath Inc.’s orchestration capabilities to reshape customer service, empower employees and set new standards for operational efficiency.

GreenShield’s Andrew Kemble and SoCal Edison’s Al Ochoa discuss AI for operational efficiency with theCUBE.

The Foundation: Knowledge Management and Centralized Data

"At Southern California Edison, we started working on knowledge management. That's unstructured data," said Al Ochoa, principal manager of predictive analytics and data science at SoCal Edison. "If you think through training an AI expertly, you really have to first make sure that all your training and policy procedures are accurate and they have to be stored in one place. Because if you feed the AI agent bad information, it's going to give bad results."

Ochoa's team at SoCal Edison works on customer service, billing and marketing. They're leveraging predictive models, AI-driven communications, robotic process automation and desktop automation to deliver better customer experiences.

"For us, focusing on knowledge management was critical," Ochoa emphasized. "Also, making sure that the data that we exposed, customer data, was in a space where we can go to one location, one centralized warehouse. That was our strategy that we worked on for probably about a year and a half prior to even building an expert or agent, AI agent."

Transforming Email Customer Service Through Communication Mining

GreenShield, a nonprofit payer-provider, uses UiPath communication mining to revolutionize customer service. Initially skeptical, the company tested the technology on email interactions and quickly realized that customers were raising very different concerns by email than over the phone.

"What we had seen over the last five years was our email volumes kept growing and growing and growing, but our call volumes were staying consistent," explained Andrew Kemble, manager of AI enablement and delivery at GreenShield. "We were putting a lot of effort and energy to helping with the voice channels, but we were kind of ignoring email. We just thought, 'Yeah, what worked with voice will work with email.' Well, when we did the proof of concept, we realized no, people are emailing in about very different concerns than what they call in about."

Automation That Empowers Agents and Improves Compliance

GreenShield used automation to remove repetitive compliance tasks from agent workflows. For example, automated verification now ensures customer data is confirmed upfront, allowing agents to focus solely on resolving inquiries. This shift has shortened response times, improved compliance and freed up agents to handle more complex and meaningful customer needs.

"Now, instead of a two-day turnaround time on emails, sending an email and two days later getting a response saying, 'Sorry, who this?' Now, they get that response right away," Kemble said. "Even from an agent compliance perspective, we have a step one. Our step one is making sure that through communication mining, intelligent automation that we're responding succinctly and precisely."