Rule No. 1, Never Lose “Customer”
Rule No. 2, Don’t Forget Rule No. 1
Warren Buffet (American business magnate, investor and philanthropist)
Understanding how to create loyal customers so you can retain them is one of the most important things for any business, not just utility customers. Retaining your customers is low-hanging fruit, but the majority of businesses still focus on customer acquisition rather than retention even though it can cost 7 times more acquire new customers.
And the recent report from Ofgem on Utility company customer service performance is shocking with a flood of complaints leaving some of the big utility companies hot under the collar.
One of the worst findings highlighted that household customers had to contact their suppliers an average of six times before their complaints were resolved. Furthermore, in almost half of cases where the supplier considered the case resolved, the customer did not.
In the past, contact centres focused their agent success metrics on lowering average call handling times (AHT), however growing discussions point that this measurement leaves too many customer issues unresolved.
Customers want ‘first contact’ resolution, which is why customer service strategies need to be developed across multiple channels and not just focus on average call handling times.
But with a rise in many businesses providing alternative contact channels to their customers, why are their contact centres still flooding with phone calls?
A lack of consistency and continuity across engagement channels seem to be the main culprit. Multiple contact channels not feeding into the same knowledge-base can stump ‘first contact’ resolution. And without the right technology in place to support customer service delivery, businesses will continue to fail, to meet or exceed their customer’s expectations. Having a well implemented customer service strategy with a centralised knowledge-base at its core, is key to meeting the following challenges facing companies especially within the utility sector.
Turning up the heat on your customer service strategy
It makes sense to give customers the opportunity to self-serve answers to the most commonly asked questions themselves online, to allow contact centre agents to deal with more complex issues. And with more than 40% of online adults being multi-device users and over 70% of the UK population now owning a smartphone, customers are increasingly turning to online channels to contact an organisation to resolve a customer service issue.
An intuitive FAQ search tool or live chat via a tab on a company Facebook page, website (optimised for mobile) or during an e-mail or contact form enquiry, has been the key for many leading organisations we’ve helped to not only reduce their level of in-bound enquiries, but more importantly, to resolve the majority of customer enquiries quickly and efficiently.
Why not visit the download section on our website where we can offer insight for developing your customer service strategy such as:
- Reducing customer contact – improving first contact resolution
- Offering a consistent multi-channel customer service
- Improving operational and service cost efficiency
- Increasing customer satisfaction & loyalty levels
