Generative AI has ‘turbocharged the power of the human’ says Octopus Energy founder Greg Jackson
Greg Jackson (right) at the Accenture conference. Photo: Accenture
Octopus Energy chief says using generative AI is ‘like a superpower’ for his employees
Generative AI has “turbocharged the power of the human”, according to Greg Jackson, the founder and chief executive of Octopus Energy.
He said that for his staff, using artificial intelligence has been “like a superpower for them. It’s incredible how gen AI is not only improving external outcomes, but also internal behaviours too.”
Jackson was speaking at Accenture’s International Utilities and Energy Conference in Lisbon, and he outlined the journey Octopus has been on with generative AI… and how that journey began.
“During the energy crisis, we saw a doubling in the number of calls from customers and a doubling in the length of those calls, because people were really struggling with energy costs,” he said. “There was no way we could staff-up fast enough.”
“So, when gen AI came to prominence in around November 2022 – just as the energy crisis was hitting – we asked ourselves how we could use it to help us solve the customer service challenges during the crisis.”
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Jackson said that by January 2023 the company had “prototypes that were able to answer customer emails using gen AI. And by May of 2023, 45% of all customer emails were being written by gen AI – that’s tens of thousands of emails a day.”
And he highlighted one thing that had surprised him. “We think computers are not as empathetic as a human, yet the very first email I saw that had been written by gen AI was to a customer who was struggling to pay their bills because of ill health. The AI opened the email by saying: ‘At times like this, there are more important things to worry about than your energy bills. First and foremost, I hope your health is improved’. And it ended with the same empathy.”
Octopus was formed in 2015 and he said that because the founding team “came from technology”, they saw the potential of how digitalisation – and subsequently artificial intelligence – could transform the sector.
Now the company is well-known as a technology pioneer: Jackson explained that it employs 9,000 staff and “last year we had 260,000 job applications – and 60,000 of them were in software and data science”.
And he added it’s not the technology that makes the sector attractive: for young people, it’s the chance to play an active part in the climate fight.
“The mission is so compelling,” said Jackson. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. We are working in a sector which has got as much revolution as the internet and is as fundamental to life.”
Earlier this month, Accenture announced that it had partnered with Octopus-owned Kraken Technologies to help helping the retail arm of EDF UK accelerate the migration of customers to its new platform.
The partnership is intended to accelerate the adoption of smart energy products, from wind farms to smart meters, by utilising Kraken’s AI-enabled tech platform.
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