Boosting productivity with GenAI Claire Assistant

20 %

of employees use Claire on a regular basis

38 000+

conversation started over the course with Claire of 7 months

About the Client

Erste Digital is the IT competence center of Erste Group, responsible for delivering digital solutions and managing core banking systems across all of the Group’s markets. Headquartered in Austria and employing over 2,000 people, it is one of the largest IT companies in Europe. As part of Erste Group, a major financial services provider in Central and Eastern Europe with 48,000 employees, 11 billion euros in revenue, and 16.6 million customers, Erste Digital plays a critical role in driving innovation and operational efficiency.

In collaboration with Erste Bank Österreich, which serves 4.3 million customers and employs more than 16,000 people, Erste Digital is leading the transformation of internal processes. This joint effort focuses on leveraging AI-driven solutions to enhance employee productivity and streamline banking operations across the Group’s seven core markets.

The Challenge

With thousands of daily employee queries about internal instructions, such as deposit conditions, exceptions, or loan collateral rules, navigating hundreds of scattered documents and process manuals was inefficient and time-consuming. Legacy systems lacked the ability to deliver quick, accurate answers, which slowed down operations and reduced employee productivity. Erste aimed to solve this by introducing an AI-powered chatbot built on top of its internal knowledge base.

The goal was to provide instant, context-aware responses, reduce manual search efforts, and free up staff to focus on customer-facing tasks. This marked a key step toward improving internal service quality and operational efficiency.

The Solution

To improve employee efficiency and reduce time spent searching through internal documentation, a generative AI-based solution was introduced. It was identified as a high-impact opportunity with relatively low implementation complexity. The Databricks AI platform served as the backbone of the solution, combining vector search and REST API functionalities to deliver fast and relevant results.

Internal documents were securely ingested from SharePoint folders, and user interactions were handled through the existing internal chatbot, Claire. The entire system is orchestrated on Erste’s on-premise infrastructure, ensuring full control over operations while still benefiting from cloud-based tools like MLFlow for performance monitoring and version tracking.

Employees can provide feedback on the chatbot’s responses using simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons, creating a continuous loop for improvement and helping to refine the quality of answers over time