Conversational AI Enhances Internal Support and Efficiency at Aker BP

Aker BP is one of Norway’s largest oil exploration and development companies, with approximately 2,000 employees spread across five offices and various offshore sites. The company is committed to providing efficient and effective internal support to its employees to ensure smooth operations. As the company grew, it faced challenges in maintaining the efficiency of its support services, leading to the adoption of AI technology to enhance its internal support systems. Aker BP's vision is to enable all employees to have access to administrative self-service, and the implementation of the AI-powered virtual agent, AkerAnna, is a significant step towards achieving this goal.

Aker BP, one of Norway’s largest oil exploration and development companies, faced a significant challenge in providing efficient internal support to its approximately 2,000 employees across five offices and various offshore sites. Initially, the company relied on administrative assistants to handle queries related to IT, HR, training, supply chain management, and more. However, as the company grew, this approach became less efficient, with support staff becoming overwhelmed with repetitive tasks and queries. These tasks, while important, consumed significant amounts of time, diverting them from key tasks such as recruitment, training, and organizational development. Aker BP sought to move away from a reliance on human support and aimed to achieve administrative self-service by increasing employee efficiency while maintaining the high level of service they were accustomed to. The company aimed to create a central hub of knowledge that employees could easily access for answers, while still having support staff available for more complex requests.

Aker BP turned to Boost.ai’s conversational AI platform to address its internal support challenges. The platform, built on a foundation of class-leading Natural Language Understanding (NLU), enabled Aker BP to develop an advanced virtual agent powered by artificial intelligence. This agent could scale and provide 24/7 support across multiple domains as the company’s needs grew. The no-code nature of the solution also allowed Aker BP to leverage the expertise of its existing employees in building, deploying, and maintaining the virtual agent, eliminating the need for data scientists or developers. In 2018, Aker BP launched the virtual agent, AkerAnna, in partnership with Boost.ai and AVO Consulting. Initially, AkerAnna was designed to assist with HR and facilities management inquiries. However, due to its success, the service was quickly expanded into other domains including IT, training and onboarding, and related technical information.

• The implementation of AkerAnna has resulted in significant operational benefits for Aker BP. The virtual agent has not only reduced the burden on support staff but also improved the efficiency of employees by providing quick and accurate responses to their queries. AkerAnna's ability to provide personalized support based on an employee's location further enhances its effectiveness. The virtual agent has become popular among employees, with many referring to it as their favorite colleague. AkerAnna's deep company and domain knowledge, 24/7 availability, and personalized support have made it an integral part of Aker BP’s internal support strategy, contributing to an increase in overall operational efficiency for the company.

• AkerAnna can answer questions and automate actions on more than 2,200 topics, averaging over 2,000 conversations per week.

• The company reports that 90% of conversations are successfully solved by AkerAnna.

• AkerAnna saves an average of 5 minutes per employee, amounting to 150 hours per week.