How can utility companies improve their customer experiences?

The ball is in your court with the next-gen Utility CRM platform!

The utility industry growth, which was considered to be quite static in the past, is now going through the twists of modernisation and digital transformation. Off lately, the intrusion of technology in all the business sectors to provide exceptional customer service has mounted pressure on utility providers severely. The new-age customers don’t seem to happily accept or be satisfied with the limited conventional methods of service and care. This is why; the role of customer service in influencing the ratepayers has increased than ever before.

A Harvard Business Review study concludes that 43% of the customers having a negative experience chose to continue their membership after a year, compared to the 74% of those having a positive experience.

Considering the increased competition in the market, new service standards, higher demand, energy alternatives, budget crunch, tech-savvy people, deregulated utility providers need to ensure that they have the right tools and processes in place to reduce the churn rate.

The old linear utility CRM process cycle to make a customer, sell product or services and provide a normal after-sale support has now changed to include more dynamic and ground-breaking customer experience at every stage. This is beneficial for the companies as well to retain their customers, up-sell and cross-sell other services as well as makes the existing users their brand evangelists. As even, the regulated and vertically inclined utility providers are banking on prominent customer service.

According to the January 2017 Research Report by the Institute of Customer Service – UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI),the utilities sector is trying to close the gap with improvements but it still remains somewhere in the bottom of the index of customer satisfaction rankings with a score of 74.4 (out of 100).

Technology is a great enabler! Rather than spending huge on specialised hardware systems and experimenting with uncertain processes, it is wise to embrace the widely accepted cloud-based customer service platform and mobile apps.

Let’s have a look at the capabilities offered by this solution to boost the utility CRM by a long shot:

Drive Customer Engagement

Customers, expecting a change of stride, are no longer satisfied with slow-paced and stone-age methods to avail support services. The robust customer service platform dedicated to the utility industry is designed to gain the ground of positive engagement. It helps your customer service representatives (CSR) to make most of the accumulated data and be answerable to the users. The multi-channel utility CRM solution serves as a centralised source to account management, service request management, billing and payments, SLA management and adhere to the legislative standards.

Instigate Proactive Services

The modern customer relationship management strategy is largely centred on being more proactive than reactive. The solution assists the companies to take timely actions and manoeuvre future plans in advance with the insights from a single source of information. For instance, it allows helping your customers by observing energy usage dashboards, offering rebates, preparing your field teams, etc. Moreover, the automation-based workflows match the exact business processes for smarter working.

Personalised Approach

“Personalised Services” have won hearts of the customers across all the industries. The utility sector should not lag behind to leverage technology for the associated benefits. The suite of self-service applications and web channels offer various self-help options to the customers thereby reducing number of direct calls and increasing levels of satisfaction. These apps help the customer to pay their bills, manage their accounts, monitor their usage, push notifications; search knowledge base, get updates and even company can send them quick tips to save energy & other such guides.

Monitor Performance and Other Metrics

Data is precious, powerful and portentous. A company’s ability to exploit its information gathered over years is certainly helpful to reshape and streamline the existing processes and serve the customers in a better and effective manner. Data analysis supports measuring performance and identifying issues and loopholes. It opens the door to control the problems and improve the quality by having a close watch at the metrics. With the the platform offering accurate dashboard metrics, predictive analytics is going to be the game changer.

Boost Revenues and Dividends

The rising uncertainties in the utility industry, aging infrastructure, high functional costs, demand for high operational efficiency, lower growth cycles and cost cutting scenarios have challenged the companies to earn sufficient ROI. However, the flexible, scalable and device-independent comprehensive customer service solution delivers utmost quality of services and care to the customers, earn new ones, and garners opportunities to extract maximum performance from the employees with economical expense.

The utility industrial sector needs to devise fresh information technology-oriented strategies with a vision of not only satisfying customers but creating innovative customer experiences. As the disruptors continue to splurge in the competition by distinguishing themselves in terms of service and digital engagement, a company cannot afford to take a nosedive and be forgotten by their customers. Read our special edition whitepaper on utility CRM about the smart transformation journey and its effects. For more information and implementation, request a non-obligatory demo or connect to us on Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and LinkedIn.