Cognigy.AI is Transforming Urban Mobility

As Germany’s largest municipal public transportation company, BVG transports millions of passengers through the capital, Berlin, every day. The increasing complexity of urban mobility, coupled with high customer expectations for digital services, created new opportunities for BVG.

The strategy: A secure, innovative, multi-tiered deployment of AI Agents across phone, app, and chat channels.

80%

Voice AI Automation rate for route planning

GenAI

Integration for natural phone conversations

The Challenge

The increasing number of customer inquiries, many of them repetitive and easy to answer, led to a high workload in customer service. Back office teams and sales points reached the limits of their capacity. At the same time, expectations for fast and round-the-clock availability continued to grow.

In particular, for questions about route planning, travel times, or ticket information, BVG needed a scalable solution to improve both efficiency and service quality. The challenge was to shape this digital transformation in a way that would be understandable, accessible, and reliable for all users.

"To meet rising customer expectations, we chose Cognigy’s market-leading solution. We can now train AI Agents that handle more than a million conversations per year in full alignment with GDPR standards."

Carlos Reinsch

Project Manager for Marketing, eCommerce and Sales Innovation at BVG

The Solution

BVG's goal is to significantly enhance service quality through the implementation of GDPR-compliant AI Agents in customer service. These are now available via phone and chat.

Voice AI with LLM
WebChat & App

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Voice Agent for On-the-Fly Route Planning

As part of its digital customer communication strategy, a voice-based AI Agent for route planning was introduced. Passengers can call a dedicated number from any location to plan their journey by requesting travel information through a natural dialogue with the AI.

The BVG Voice AI Agent understands natural language and provides precise answers in real time. Users can ask freely phrased questions such as:

• "What’s the fastest way to get to Warschauer Straße?"
• "When is the next subway to Alexanderplatz?"
• "I want to go from Berlin Mitte to Berlin Zoo right now."

If there are further questions, callers can also be directly connected to customer service staff, ensuring a seamless experience with no wait times.

Chat Agents for Digital Self-Service

BVG has developed a multilingual AI Agent as a chat solution for its website and ticketing app, covering a wide range of customer inquiries around the clock. The topics range from simple FAQs to more complex issues, which are systematically captured through structured digital forms and forwarded to customer service representatives for further processing.

The Chat Agent is already widely accepted by users as a full-fledged alternative to personal customer interaction. Passenger trust in digital communication has noticeably increased, resulting in less demand for in-person support. The AI Agent ensures BVG’s availability 24/7.

The Impact

The introduction of Cognigy.AI at BVG has already delivered clear results.

Call centers, back offices, and sales points have been noticeably relieved, allowing staff to focus more on complex inquiries that require human expertise. At the same time, automation rates are rising without compromising the high quality of responses. For customers, this means significantly faster, more flexible, and location-independent handling of their inquiries, which positively impacts overall satisfaction.

Internally, the project is regarded as a best practice and is considered a benchmark for the use of AI Agents in public transportation at BVG.

Looking ahead, AI Agents will go beyond providing route information or answering questions.

They will also sell tickets, handle lost-and-found requests, assist with navigation during large events, and guide tourists through Berlin.

With Cognigy’s Agentic AI Platform, communication with BVG is becoming more intuitive, faster, and more comprehensive, providing user-friendly service to millions of passengers.

Omnichannel Solutions

High Loyalty

AI-supported Contact Center

Afshin Zamani

Partner Manager @ BVG

With Cognigy.AI we have fundamentally modernized our customer service, as our customers receive reliable information instantly via voice input. The AI service is quick, efficient, and without waiting times. The high level of automation saves valuable internal resources and significantly drives our digital service initiative forward.