Enabling High Customer Satisfaction through Managing Critical Operations for Public Utility Company
Company Overview:
A regional public utility had a call-to-action to improve its customer service due to regulatory requirements. Its legacy platform could not provide the necessary capacity, flexibility and capability required. Service levels had been on a steady decline, accelerating more so over the few years prior to the required change. By improving its customer service, the utility sought to provide personalized customer service, streamline operations, reduce costs and meet regulatory requirements. The utility had 3 call centers and over 30 local facilities that each needed to provide seamless service to its customers.
Having a sound solution was one part of the situation. The other was the ability to have on-going sustaining and enhancing of the solution so that additional business objectives could be met.
Purpose:
This utility required a support, operations, application management and monitoring provider to provide high quality and reliable services to ensure the platform and the applications were reliable and provided to the business its goal of world-class customer support. The utility faced severe penalties from the Public Utilities Commissions if it did not meet the legislated service levels for call handling and system availability. Ensuring the business met its obligations had to be job one of the managed services provider.
After a competitive proposal process, eLoyalty ICS Managed Services and its Operate and Run service was chosen due to is proven track record of assisting its clients in achieving solution stability and optimization.
Business Objectives:
- Improve customer service through effective IVR self service including speech-enabled applications and call routing design to ensure the customer is assisted on the first call by the right company representative.
- Meet all regulatory service requirements including availability, call handling responsiveness, 100% call recording, and operations reporting especially during emergency situations such as inclement weather outages, gas leaks and other serious customer-impacting situations.
- Achieve streamlined and efficient business operations that meet the other business objectives in a cost-effective manner.
- Outsource all technical operations, support, application management, and monitoring to a reliable and capable provider.
- Ability to make changes rapidly but with high quality is critical especially when weather issues bring forth new customer service challenges.
The Solution:
ICS Managed Services Operate and Run from eLoyalty.
The Process:
- Designed, installed and implemented call routing utilizing a Cisco IP/IVR and UCCE solution.
- Implemented several IVR applications to allow a greater degree of self-service including account information, bill paying and service management.
- Designed and implemented a customer CTI desktop for client representatives utilizing information captured in the IVR session and enabling the appropriate screen pop. The customer is better because the information they provided is used by the solution to retrieve their relevant data and make that data available to the client service representative.
- Enabled operations real-time and historical reporting so the contact center and customer service operations teams can have insight into operations and adjust as necessary so their customer is optimally served.
- Enabled intelligent screen population based on data entered in the IVR.
- Provide agents with caller identification and purpose of the call when transferring an interaction from the IVR solution.
- Engage ICS Managed Services Operate and Run during the deployment to ensure efficient and effective transition to support and operations.
- Highly utilize ICS Managed Services Operate and Run during production to introduce call routing changes, ensure incidents are handled promptly and with minimal impact servicing the customer.
Results:
- Strong solution design and implementation and operate and run services have enabled the client to achieve its business objectives.
- High-touch client-focused service by ICS Managed Services Operate and Run have assisted the client's customers service objectives.