Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) operates the largest energy distribution network in the UK, including the supply businesses of Scottish Hydro, Southern Electric, SWALEC, Airtricity and Atlantic. Supplying over 10 million customer accounts, SSE has more than 50 years' experience in the generation, distribution and supply of energy.
The Customer Service Operations Team in Portsmouth were keen to investigate ways of improving their current Net Promoter Score (NPS)surveying activity in order to achieve greater efficiencies and a broader measurement of Net Promoter Scoring throughout the business. The important focus was to reduce costs, without impacting the existing level of customer experience.
For maximum flexibility, SSE was keen to deploy interactive voice messaging (IVM). This would enable surveys to be conducted in a highly efficient and automated way that was convenient for customers. Before it went ahead however, the company wanted to be sure that moving to an automated system would not remove the personal touch from the customer experience, or create new challenges relating to the way sensitive customer data would now be used.
By working with outbound communications specialist VoiceSage, SSE was able to quickly allay these fears. VoiceSage provides a range of cloud-based communications solutions that enable companies to automate routine business processes through interactive voice and interactive text messaging.
VoiceSage developed, implemented and deployed a fully working solution to SSE within just three weeks, working closely with the customer services team to provide full reassurance about how customer data would be handled.
Previously SSE needed a team of 15 agents to make outbound calls to customers, at a cost of over £3 per completed survey. Now, communication costs are down to under 40p per completed survey – more than seven times cheaper.
The scope for conducting NPS surveys is now unlimited. Previously SSE was limited in its outbound call volumes due to the finite human resources available. Now automated, the surveys can be extended across multiple areas of the business – for all departments and locations.
SSE has been able to reassign its call agents to other areas of the business where they are able to add greater value.
Next, SSE plans to exploit greater analysis and reporting capabilities, including intelligent keyword analysis available via Speech-to-Text transcription. This will allow verbatim comments given during calls to be analysed, creating a more accurate image of issues that customers are discussing.