Unified architecture can be the solution to customer chaos and agent vertigo.
An agent is signing up a valuable new customer. She or he switches between various applications, many requiring different log-in IDs, to describe product choices, complete the credit check and create a new account. The next call is a customer billing question, followed by an outage report, each requiring the same “swivel-seat” phenomenon that puts the agent’s focus on systems instead of the customer. Besides the potential for a nasty case of vertigo for the agent, this back-and-forth between applications lengthens calls, can lead to costly errors and frustrates both agents and customers.
Utilities are faced with the high cost of customer interaction and the chaos caused by higher customer expectations and churn and employee turnover in a competitive, deregulated market—all driving the need for change. Major upgrades or replacing legacy applications can be a risky, complex and costly step that many utilities are not ready to take. Plus, these legacy systems are often highly customized and not properly documented, putting utilities at risk of losing needed functionality. However, the market is forcing them to eliminate or minimize these issues and improve their customer care process.
New information technology tools and processes are available that enable dramatic improvements in the utility call center, transforming the customer experience into a competitive advantage for the company, its agents and customers. The solution lies in creating a unified architecture that integrates all customer care channels into one framework. Within this framework, all contact channels, including self-service, are synchronized in real time.
A utility’s biggest pain points
Utilities often augment their large customer information systems (CIS) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems with additional applications and channel capabilities. This leaves fragmented and separated applications for each different task, causing productivity and quality issues. In this scenario, system user interfaces are commonly ill-defined and do not have a global view of the customer, which causes agents to play the system back-and-forth game. These multiple legacy systems create major integration problems, do not integrate people and processes and also make training difficult, expensive and confusing.
According to Žarko Sumi´c, vice president, energy and utilities at Gartner, as utilities struggle with aging legacy applications, giving their CIS and call center environments a facelift instead of replacing the entire system is a practical approach. “Modernizing the system in phases provides immediate incremental benefits to service while also opening the door to new channels so that utilities can remain competitive,” said Sumi´c.
There are some new major CIS revisions now underway that are designed to improve customer service and reduce support costs. Two major utilities, one in North America and one in Europe, are making strides in improving customer care using a .NET framework-based service-oriented architecture (SOA). This approach avoids “rip-and-replace” and unifies and streamlines systems and processes across contact channels. Both utilities are using the new architecture as an opportunity to improve customer service. For example, a customer who owns several retail shops and has multiple addresses listed under her name calls in with a billing question. Even though the customer service representative needs information from multiple sources to answer her questions, the CSR has the ability to access various records in a single interface. Questions are answered in a timely manner, which reduces the average handling time, a key call center metric.
An SOA foundation can create more efficient operations by enabling a unified view of all existing legacy systems. Service orientation is an approach to organizing distributed information technology resources into an integrated solution that breaks down information silos and maximizes business agility. This provides a cost-effective level of flexibility and operational productivity to legacy technology.
A major European gas and power utility recently implemented a proof-of-concept solution and has already seen dramatic agent productivity improvements—60 percent for specific business processes being measured—and has planned future phased releases.
These types of solutions are not necessarily expensive or complicated. They expand the traditional call-in option to a unified architecture that enables multiple, integrated contact channels, including self-service portals and speech. This flexible architecture integrates through web services, making it very easy to add new applications or processes that work with existing channels. Furthermore, considering that it is nearly 10 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing account, cost is a relative term and must be framed by relationship lifecycles.
Supporting new Web 2.0 and green programs
New IT solutions include functions to support Web 2.0 scenarios. Channel integration dramatically improves agent and customer experiences by delivering accurate and appropriate information from all contact channels to agents more quickly in an easy-to-use, single sign-on desktop. Now the customer doesn’t have to describe the e-mail he already sent or repeat previous conversations she’s had with agents.
Green programs, which many utilities are starting to offer, may be administered in systems separate from the CIS or even from a state-provided source. Instead of building the green program into the CIS, utilities can integrate the green system into their existing architecture. That way, when agents talk with customers, the source system is easy to access directly.
What to look for in a customer care solution
Here are the four most important features to look for when seeking options for improving customer care:
- Make sure the system provides a unified view of customer information including single sign-on to billing, trouble ticketing, order management and CRM. It should support both customer self-service and call center inbound traffic and also open new channels between operations, customer care and customers.
- The system should include self-service options such as self-help and live chat.
- Ensure that the system seamlessly integrates with underlying business applications without requiring changes to existing systems.
- The system should be priced competitively.
Successful utility companies view customer service excellence as a strategic advantage and recognize that the IT platform must support the commitment. They also realize that agents must have access to a 360-degree view of the customer to quickly and efficiently answer questions, resolve issues, correspond across multiple communication channels and provide needs-based selling to a receptive, loyal audience. Operations and IT can balance personalized and efficient customer support with the needs to drive cost efficiencies and streamline call center operations. (Visit www.elp.com for more articles on customer care.)
Authors
Jon Arnold is managing director, worldwide utilities industry, at Microsoft. Arnold has more more than 25 years of IT experience, with half of that time in utilities. He has been a featured speaker at many conferences and testified before Congress and the FERC on utility technology issues. You may contact Arnold at Jon.Arnold@microsoft.com
Mark Morrison, head of marketing and alliances, global utilities practice, Infosys, has more than 15 years of consulting, marketing and sales experience in the IT industry.