{"id":13931,"date":"2020-08-19T11:56:51","date_gmt":"2020-08-19T10:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/?p=13931"},"modified":"2024-11-05T11:03:04","modified_gmt":"2024-11-05T11:03:04","slug":"utilities-reduce-customer-effort-raise-cx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/blog\/2020\/08\/19\/utilities-reduce-customer-effort-raise-cx\/","title":{"rendered":"Utilities: Reduce Customer Effort, Raise CX"},"content":{"rendered":"

Utilities – Good CX Matters! | Ben Drakeford at QStory<\/strong><\/h3>\n

As you may know I recently joined the QStory<\/a> team. I quickly discovered that as a business QStory<\/a> is proud of the relationships we have with clients and retaining a deep understanding of the contact centre world we work with. One of the first priorities I was given was to talk directly with people in the industry and to existing customers to learn about the business first hand. <\/span><\/p>\n

I was set up with a virtual coffee meeting with a senior leader from one of our customers and despite some initial nerves, I left feeling invigorated. I simply had to share what I learned.<\/span><\/p>\n

The QStory ARTI software is a fascinating piece of technology. It is installed swiftly, within a few weeks, and almost instantly starts to deliver a step change in contact centre performance, on top of the WFM it closes a performance gap that otherwise is invisible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What I have discovered is that contact centres are designed to fulfil a specific purpose but that much gets in the way of optimal performance. QStory<\/a> software enables the business to bridge the gap between expected performance and the results that are actually achieved.<\/span><\/p>\n

During my introduction I spent an hour sharing a virtual coffee with one of the QStory<\/a> clients from the Utilities market. I met with the Head of Contact Centre to learn about the operation and discover how they have deployed the software.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She explained to me the role of the contact centre in the organisation. \u201cWe are primarily focused on customer service in this centre. Our job is to manage the incoming calls from customers and deal with complaints and queries.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She went on to describe the biggest challenge they face and the paradox of being a complaints team in the world of utilities. \u201cWhen customers get in touch via phone, email or webchat they are already frustrated with the business. As a utility company we are seen as essential and when there are problems they really matter to our customers. Therefore any problems that arise as a result of the experience of the contact centre itself simply make matters worse.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

During the conversation the customer told a story about a young mum who was experiencing service problems and was very worried. With a young family she was afraid for her children who could be heard in the background and she was clearly anxious. The fact that she could talk directly to a service agent who was able to book a call back and resolve the issue was such a reassurance for a young woman at her wits end.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t always that way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The QStory<\/a> client talked about the poor reputation that utilities companies have when it comes to customer service. They are regularly rated very badly by customers when it comes to service.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Long waiting times, failure to keep promises, complexity, and poor levels of information available to agents are all consistently the topic of complaints by customers. Indeed there have been calls for the government to step in and deal with the problems related to the utilities industry such is the level of concern. It\u2019s been clear for a while that utility companies need to lower the customer effort to raise the experience.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Utilities companies are central to the fundamentals of life, heating, lighting, water, communications. These are all taken for granted by many people but when problems occur they are serious, frightening and immediately there is pressure on the utility company to resolve them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My goal for the coffee that we shared was to uncover what difference QStory<\/a> had made to their operations. What had changed that meant that the young mother was able to find such reassurance in a market where many companies fail to deliver satisfaction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The answer took the customer half an hour to explain. She described how a programme of change with QStory<\/a> at the centre had been delivered and affected many aspects of how they operate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe realised that the key measures of success that we have is the experience that our customers have when contacting us in the centre and our ability to resolve their query. Once we understood that then we needed to find a way to optimise the resources we had and motivate our team of agents. We had a lot of technology in the centre but it was so complex that we could not always see what was happening.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Lateness was a problem for us, especially once we had staff working from home in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdown. The problem was that we could not see where problems in capacity existed until it was too late. The morning spike in calls that we planned for was never fully covered because we didn\u2019t have the resources we thought we had. We needed to find a way to ensure that agents were logged in on time and after breaks they were back at the right time according to the schedule.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

However, we needed to balance the experience of the customer who wants to talk with the right agent and for that agent to be able to help because they understand the problem. Too often we found that we didn\u2019t have the right person on hand or failed to call back the customer when we had promised to in order to resolve the issue.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Installing QStory solved all these issues in one go. From day one we could see immediately what resources we had available and communicate directly with agents who were not online.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The result was that the resources we had planned for were available, agents could book specific call backs with customers and we had the ability to move resources around when we needed to with no risk to the service levels.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The biggest change that we made was to closely track the performance of each agent. We were able to connect QStory to our other systems and gather customer feedback on the agent experience as well as track whether the problem was resolved. Suddenly we could connect agent activity to customer feedback and resolution of problems. This combination of factors was a game changer for us and our performance\u201d.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The level of enthusiasm from the customer was incredible. I was surprised by how positive and open she was about the difference that had been made in the business. I could not wait to talk with more customers about the possibilities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Utilities is a difficult industry in which to make a real change to customer experience. These large organisations have developed a reputation for poor service and profits at the expense of customers. But what I heard was that companies do care about the service they deliver and that with QStory they have the tools to help them deliver on the promises of the business to serve customers and deliver on the needs of customers.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the next few weeks I am going to learn more about QStory<\/a> customers and industries, I am excited to be part of a company that creates such enthusiasm from customers. I am already full of pride for the company I have joined and can\u2019t wait to introduce the software to other clients who are seeking ways to reduce customer effort and raise customer satisfaction in the utilities industry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

>Connect with Ben here.<\/strong><\/a>
\n>Follow QStory here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Utilities – Good CX Matters! | Ben Drakeford at QStory As you may know I recently joined the QStory team. I quickly discovered that as a business QStory is proud of the relationships we have with clients and retaining a deep understanding of the contact centre world we work with. One of the first priorities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"industry":[89],"class_list":["post-13931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","industry-utilities"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16433,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13931\/revisions\/16433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13931"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=13931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}