The official Alexa skill, to give voice to energy

«Alexa, open Enel Energia!». Just four words spoken aloud are enough to project yourself into the future of energy. With the new official Enel Energia skill, a voice command directed at Amazon devices allows you to manage supplies, obtain information about payments, deadlines, and activation processes. With Ore Free, it is also possible to intervene directly on the supply via Alexa. The new Enel Energia offer for owners of 2G meters allows you to independently decide each day the three consecutive hours during which the energy component is free. It is a choice that can be set not only through the app or the Customer Area but also with Alexa, through a simple voice command. The future of artificial intelligence is about breaking down barriers and making users' lives easier and more intuitive. With the Alexa skill, Enel Energia has taken an important step in this direction.

The Alexa project, Enel Energia skill, was born in the Digital Solution Italy laboratory, as an experiment for developing virtual assistants. Alongside technological development and training, studies on design, user experience, and linguistics were also conducted.

«Alexa for us was a completely new challenge, we faced a profound paradigm shift, from designing visual interfaces to developing conversational flows», explains Sara Carretta, UX & Conversation Designer, «from the complete management of the software, from development to training, to the constraints imposed by an ecosystem like Amazon».

The goal was to create a new digital touchpoint to offer customers the usual standards in terms of welcome and professionalism. The challenge and complexity were to bring out the distinctive traits of our brand through a tool that is almost exclusively vocal like Alexa.

Sara Carretta’s work was to manage and structure the potential conversational flows between the customer and Amazon's virtual assistant, Alexa. «It was the development of a perfect mix between user experience, technology and language» – she recounts – «In addition to guiding users through voice commands, we “trained” the skill to understand the way people communicate culturally, the use of words, jargon and meaning... all the nuances that influence the interpretation and comprehensibility of words».

On one side there was the infinite variety of each person’s speech, with inflections, pronunciations, accents. On the other side there is the conversion from speech to text that allows artificial intelligence to interact and respond correctly.
The work carried out combined programming, linguistics, psychology, analysis of customer habits and needs.

In July 2019, the first experimentation began, but the official launch, with an announcement to all users, took place only a few weeks ago.

Francesca Cupini defines herself as an «atypical nuclear engineer», who now works in marketing on consumer offers and customer experience. She is the coordinator of the working group that promoted the skill and above all the person who best understands the importance that a new touchpoint like Alexa can have in the overall experience of Enel Energia users. «Having implemented all these possibilities in a voice command opens up a new world of potential related to accessibility for blind or visually impaired people», she explains. Moreover, one of the most interesting aspects is that it is not only the younger and more technologically updated users who appreciate the voice command directed at artificial intelligence.
«Among the customers who appreciate this possibility are elderly people, who feel more at ease interacting with the Enel Energia ecosystem through voice and conversation rather than typing».

Marco Furci from the Digital Marketing team is among those who followed the storytelling of this new opportunity presented to users. «Our claim was: “We give voice to energy”», he recounts, «The key to the strategy is to offer an omni-channel experience, ranging from supply activation to its management through the access points offered by Enel Energia. The innovation of Alexa makes everything easier and more convenient and the potential increases with the flexible offers guaranteed by 2G meters, allowing customers to be increasingly the protagonists of the energy they use».

Enel Energia tools like Elena, the virtual assistant, and the Alexa skill are also a good way to familiarize with artificial intelligences. «It is an inevitable change in user experience in every sector, and it is increasingly becoming part of our lives», recounts Sara Carretta, «But it is something we can guide, direct, put at the service of others. In this we also feel a kind of responsibility towards people».