Developing a Solution

Developing a Voice Solution

Off the shelf or build your own? How to design?

Understanding core principles is critical for developing a voice solution.

Design Process

Step 1: Develop Use Cases / Intents

The use cases (also known as “intents”) for an Energy Assistant are fairly well understood (e.g., bill projection, top appliance usage, tips for saving energy, etc.) based on what is suitable for a conversational interface:

Quick and useful information that provides a lot of benefit in a short time.
Information that is timely and that a consumer may think of while they’re in the middle of other tasks.
Personalized information that can be used to gain a sense of rapport with customers.

Based on market research we’ve conducted, here are the use cases that we’ve prioritized for our Energy Assistant:

Category	Use Cases
Usage	Current electricity usage, bill projection, bill comparison, appliance usage comparison
Itemization	Top consumers of electricity
Tips	Personalized recommendations for saving energy
Alerts	Budget alerts, time-of-use alerts, behavior alerts (e.g. pre-cool the home)
Program Recruitment	Information about rebate and incentive programs

Bidgely will work with you to choose the desired intents to be included in the Voice Assistant.

Step 2: Write Scripts

Scripts make up the conversations between the user and the Energy Assistant. There are various best practices to follow in developing scripts:

Write for how people speak rather than how they read or write
Brevity is king … limit scripts to what you can say in one breath
Prompt users with options rather than relying on them to know what to ask, but limit it to 3 choices
Don’t be repetitive in wording. Don’t say the same thing twice. :-)
Indicate when the user needs to provide information, but ask for one piece of information at a time

Here are some examples of DOs and DON’Ts:

	DO	DON’T
Prompt Users	User: Energy Assistant, open my Utility Energy Assistant. Energy Assistant: Hello, I’m your personal energy assistant. How may i help you today? You may ask your current usage, projected bill, ways to save, and much more.	User: Energy Assistant, open my Utility Energy Assistant. Energy Assistant: Hello, I am your personal energy assistant. How may i help you today?
Personalize	User: Why is my bill higher than usual this month? Energy Assistant: This month you are estimated to use $55 in cooling. This is a 30% increase compared to the same month last year.	User: Why is my bill higher than usual this month? Energy Assistant: Typical reasons that energy bills are higher are due to weather or increased usage if occupancy rises.
Be proactive	User: What can I do to reduce my electricity bill? Energy Assistant: Your cooling usage is 20% more than similar homes. You might try pre-cooling your home to avoid peak period pricing. Would you like me to set up a reminder?	User: What can I do to reduce my electricity bill? Energy Assistant: Ways to save electricity are by pre-cooling your home to avoid peak period pricing, or closing your shades to avoid heating from the sun.

Part of the development process for a voice assistant is identifying all the intents that a user has and all the alternate ways in which a user might ask a question related to that intent.

For example:

INTENT: Bill projection

"why is my bill so high",

"why is my bill so high this month",

"why is my electric bill so high",

"why is my electric bill so high this billing cycle",

"why is my electric bill so high this month"

Variants:

bill => usage
bill => consumption
electricity => energy
High => “increased …”

“This month you are estimated to use $55 in cooling. This is a 30% increase compared to the same month last year.”

Potential additional variations:

Top 3 appliances with similar home comparisons
Top 3 saving tips for each appliance category
Saving tip for the top appliances

Bidgely will work with you to customize the scripts per your branding, functional, and regional requirements.

Step 3: Build

Utilities have a choice of how to get a Voice Assistant built. There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach:

Recommendation:

Energy Voice Assistants have largely common functionality and user requirements across utilities. It therefore makes sense to buy an solution developed by a third party rather than develop one in-house. Further, having an off-the-shelf solution means that you get to take advantage of the learnings from multiple utility deployments as well as ongoing improvements, especially since Voice is a new and rapidly evolving channel for engagement. The Bidgely solution is an example of an off-the-shelf solution, and it further benefits from disaggregation as a way to provide features consumers want.

Integrating Features:

The optimal solution integrates utility functions (such as Bill Pay) with Bidgely functions (itemization, personalized tips). Bidgely can work with the utility to develop the solution, and we have flexible development and hosting options:

With Option 1, Bidgely will develop and host the solution, and can integrate and connect with utility functions such as Bill Pay.

For Option 2, Bidgely can provide disaggregation and insights for each home to the utility for integration into a Utility-hosted Voice solution.

Step 4: Test, test, test

Testing includes the following categories, and must be performed for each smart speaker device:

Functional Testing

This includes testing within vendor-provided simulators as well as beta testing with select users. With voice assistants, it’s critical to make sure all intents can be correctly triggered from sample phrases and variations on those phrases.

Policy Violations

Each smart speaker device manufacturer issues its own set of policies and the software must undergo checks to ensure compliance. Examples include privacy and security policies, naming guidelines, scripting guidelines, prohibited content, branding, copyright and intellectual property violations.

Testing for the initial deployment and again for every new version can be a time-consuming process. Using an off-the-shelf platform such as the Bidgely voice solution increases the likelihood of success.

Step 5: Launch

As an opt-in solution, the Voice Assistant needs to be marketed to customers to encourage them to enable the Voice Assistant within their account.

Please see the Authentication section for details on how the user will acquire the Voice Assistant and link it to their utility account.

The Bidgely marketing team has extensive experience in designing and handling active marketing plans via various channels to recruit customers into programs. These channels include bill inserts, Facebook and Google adwords, and email campaigns. Bidgely has standard marketing materials that can be repurposed and white labeled with the utility branding.

Step 6: Iterate

The Voice platform is new and evolving rapidly. It’s critical that the Energy Assistant be updated, incorporating new functions and customer feedback.

The benefit of an off-the-shelf solution is that learnings from each utility can be applied across all other utility deployments, so each SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) customer is always getting the best of breed functionality.

Website Content

Section 4 - Point 1

Section 4 - Point 2

Section 4 - Point 3

Section 7 Video Title