Creating AI-powered pathways between customers and information.
Essential Energy
Infrastructure
Essential Energy’s customers often need quick, accurate access to complex information about electricity services, connections, outages, and technical guidance. With multiple websites and content sources, including the main website, Essential Engagement, knowledge base articles, and technical documentation for Accredited Service Providers, finding the right information can be challenging.
Customers may be residential users connecting a property, businesses managing energy usage, or qualified service providers performing technical work. Pollen’s AI-powered search helps bridge the gap, ensuring all audiences can access safe, contextually appropriate guidance when they need it.
Removing obstacles between customers and information
Prior research identified opportunities to improve Essential Energy’s digital experience. Users were often frustrated by dispersed content, inconsistent navigation, and technical language. Residential customers, businesses, and ASPs (Accredited Service Providers) each have unique information needs, meaning search has to adapt to context while maintaining safety. The AI-powered search addresses these challenges by providing tailored results and reducing reliance on customer support.
The right content in plain language
While a wealth of resources exists across Essential Energy’s digital ecosystem, including multiple websites and knowledge bases, this information is not always easy to find. The AI-powered search surfaces the right content in plain language, helping customers complete tasks efficiently. Whether a residential user is connecting a property, a business is planning energy upgrades, or an ASP requires technical guidance, the search delivers context-aware results from the right sources at the right time.
Safety-first, context-aware responses
Safety is paramount, particularly when providing guidance to unqualified users. The AI Search interprets queries in natural language, delivering actionable results appropriate for the user type. Residential customers receive clear instructions for safe actions, while ASPs can access technical documents securely. By understanding context, the system prevents unsafe guidance and ensures users can complete tasks confidently.
The AI Search classifies user intent before responding, preventing unnecessary alerts on routine queries while ensuring risky questions are never answered without appropriate caution. Three graduated response levels match the severity of each situation.
- Emergency warnings surface immediately, providing essential contact information
- Safety reminders appear when users ask about electrical work, directing them to qualified professionals rather than providing procedural instructions
- Professional referrals direct users to Accredited Service Providers for network-related work
Building trust through secure, authoritative information retrieval
Essential Energy’s AI Search uses Pollen’s proprietary Adaptive Retrieval system. For each query, the platform runs both keyword (lexical) and conceptual (semantic) searches, combining results with Dynamic Hybrid Weighting to deliver the most relevant answers. Enterprise guardrails, including automated PII redaction before processing, multi-layer moderation and secure handling of sensitive content, ensure interactions remain safe and trustworthy. This approach delivers far more reliable results than standard search or chatbot solutions.
Strict multi-layered evaluations are run against a golden dataset before any changes are deployed to production, giving full visibility into the effects and ensuring there are no surprises.
Supporting digital transformation across customer services
The platform includes advanced measurement and observability capabilities, with end-to-end tracing and structured logs that provide deep insight into query performance, retrieval quality, and successful task completion. This allows Essential Energy to continuously monitor and improve the AI-powered search, ensuring self-service success and a safer, more reliable experience for all users. By implementing cutting-edge AI and leveraging these observability tools, Essential Energy ensures residential customers, businesses, and Accredited Service Providers can access accurate, contextually appropriate guidance efficiently and confidently.
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