When an energy consumer reaches out, they want to speak to someone who is friendly, knowledgeable and can help them navigate their problem. A good customer service line experience will soon overtake price and product as the key factor in customer choice.
When a customer needs assistance, they overwhelmingly turn to call centers – 73 to 79 percent of customers prefer to speak to someone about complex issues. Having a well-trained and well-coached customer agent team is critical, because nearly 40 percent of customers displeased with a call center interaction will advertise their dissatisfaction on social media.
Affinity Partnerships
When you’re entering an affinity partnership, you don’t have control over your customer service line experience, but their satisfaction is integral to your business. A worthy partner will keep you appraised of their best practices, including voice analytics.
HomeServe developed the “Ask, Listen and Act!” model after implementing CallMiner voice analytics. CallMiner analyzes speech and creates transcripts of calls, behaviors and customer responses. In addition, CallMiner measures silence, tone and volume, and categorizes findings based on verbiage. The program searches for key words, phrases and parameters to determine “category hits,” revolutionizing the QA process.
Customer Service Improvements
HomeServe has made many measurable improvements in the way its call center operates as a result of implementing this tool.
- A customer service line experience scorecard was created to automatically determine the quality of service delivered. Quality is measured based on length, silence, QA standards and attributes including empathy, tone, professionalism and attention to customer needs.
- Silence in calls was reduced by pinpointing agents who need additional support or training to enhance the service they deliver. At an individual agent level silence in calls was reduced from 17 percent to 9 percent, and the 9 percent represents silence required during payment processing.
- Supervisor productivity was improved by providing calls for coaching opportunities based on pre-determined, agreed-upon criteria. The recorded calls provide valuable information that enables supervisors to quickly address opportunities with specific examples. Coaching preparation time has been reduced, allowing for more one-on-one time and coaching, which supports exceptional customer interactions.
- The program identifies areas of compliance to ensure the proper language is read during a call. Since January, 290,000 hours have been mined, revolutionizing the call monitoring process. The number of calls analyzed by Quality Assurance has increased from 12,000 manual reviews to 3.3 million topical attribute CallMiner reviews. Because of the automation of our customer experience monitoring processes, we have completed 2.3 million customer service scorecard reviews on agents across our Inbound and Repair Management teams.
Rant and Rave
To complement the insight provided by call analytics, HomeServe implemented an automated customer survey application, Rant and Rave, to deliver opt-in surveys to customers throughout their journey, through channels such as email, automated outbound contact and SMS text. This feedback is then run through a speech analytics engine, translated to text and analyzed. Analysis is performed automatically to help identify customer sentiment (positive or negative) and identifies opportunities for improvement. In the last 12 months, the application has provided over 98,000 actionable customer insights, as opposed to 4,000 prior to implementation.
The feedback is compiled in an interactive web-based dashboard and available in real time, enabling stakeholders to drill down to agent, technician, team and departmental level, providing true root cause and actionable insight into all areas of the business.
Voice analytics is a valuable tool, enabling a better understanding of agent performance and customer need. This technology a key driver in HomeServe’s ability to fulfill its commitment to delivering a best-in-class customer experience.
Utilities are looking for opportunities to connect more deeply with customers. HomeServe helps to improve customer engagement for our utility partners through the integration of complementary home repair programs with utility initiatives such as energy efficiency and safety, offering customers greater access and choice. Partnership allows the utility to leverage HomeServe’s marketing and communications expertise to educate their customers through a variety of channels.
For more information, contact us.
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