ÖWR’s CRM AI Tool – Winner of the Bronze EASA Best Practice Award
26 February 2025
The Best Practice Awards, held every two years, celebrate innovation and excellence in the field of advertising self-regulation. Each month, we will shine a spotlight on a different winning entry. This month, we feature our Austrian SRO, Österreichischer Werberat (ÖWR), which earned the prestigious Bronze EASA Best Practice Award for its CRM AI tool.
A faster, easier, and more efficient process and decision-making tool for online complaints
The Austrian Advertising Council (ÖWR) observed the potential need to upgrade the general functionality of their existing tool to process online complaints. In this context, they conducted a survey within their Judging Jury, an internal analysis within the office, and a public invitation for agencies to submit their offers for an improved tool. The final result was the development and implementation of a fast, efficient CRM tool with AI incorporated.
This more advanced tool assists the office in making its work remarkably more efficient and helps its users by offering them a quicker and easier process to submit an online complaint.
More concretely, the new tool can be used on all browsers and mobile devices, offers easier communication between complainants and the office by means of direct communication elements, and generates a standard automatic response to a complaint submission. All of it intends to improve users’ experience when entering an online complaint. On the other hand, the tool is also conceived to make it easy for the Advertising Council to reach a decision. It is intended to simplify the processing of complaints for the office and thus make better use of human resources. It offers the possibility of formulating AI-generated majority decisions and comparing those to the ones reached by the Advertising Council.
Satisfactory transition to the new system
Throughout the transition period, the ÖWR’s network adapted to the new functioning. In a three-stage information process, the Austrian SRO provided its members with extensive explanatory videos and documents on how to use the new tool. Their Jury, which comprises almost 350 people, had to convert to it while handling the incoming complaints and without failing to properly address them. This led to a notable increase of amount of work. Nevertheless, the changeover worked satisfactorily, and the ÖWR was able to maintain the average voting rate.
Direct observed results after the new tool’s implementation
Since its implementation, the new tool has saved the Austrian SRO almost 50 percent of personnel resources in the office. Moreover, and particularly noteworthy, is the tool’s results when formulating AI-generated majority decisions. So far, it has helped consolidate Jury’s individual decisions and has supported the task of text drafting. Therefore, it has been verified that the tool truly helps Jury members to process complaints faster, both online and on mobile devices, something especially convenient now that decisions must be made within six working days.
Additionally, the new tool’s various capabilities – such as providing more detailed information when submitting complaints, registering all inputs, enabling PDF downloads in edited form, and allowing information to be forwarded to advisory boards for feedback – have significantly enhanced the effectiveness of complaint processing for the ÖWR. The tool was developed and implemented by k25 Werbeagentur GmbH. “The sensible and supportive use of artificial intelligence in the decision-making tool results in an enormous increase in efficiency,” emphasized Johannes Fisecker, Managing Director and Project Manager at k25.
