Energy companies enhance customer service through mobile

With fuel poverty in the UK reaching all time highs, households continue to look for the best deal available in the market. However, it's extremely important that utility companies do not forget about customer service as this can be a key differentiator from the competition as well as an effective route to building customer loyalty and retaining customers.

 

Many utility companies have been criticised for customer service and recent Which? research revealed that only 6 out of 16 energy suppliers had an average waiting time of less than 2 minutes with one provider having an average waiting time of 17 minutes and 5 seconds. I imagine most people would be gritting their teeth if they had been on hold for this long and seeing red. One of the most frustrating experiences customers have is being left on hold and waiting for their call to be answered.

When it comes to valuing customers, Which? also found that providers were slower to answer calls from existing customer than new prospective customers. I suspect many people will not be surprised to hear this as when it comes to valuing existing customers from energy suppliers, expectations are pretty low.

Which? executive director, Richard Lloyd, stated: “If energy companies want to restore trust in the industry they must work harder to make people feel confident that customer service is a top priority, and stop putting sales over service.”

How can mobile help utility companies enhance customer service?

Mobile can be an effective way to reduce the number of calls made to customer service departments, helping improve call answer times and reduce the number of irate customers. For example, SMS can be used for sending information regarding outages ensuring that when customer service is affected, they are notified immediately and are kept updated as to when the outage is expected to be fixed. This helps greatly reduce the number of calls made to customer service departments, as well as managing expectations of customers.

Another way of strengthening the customer relationship is by keeping utility customers updated as to when an engineer will be arriving at their premises. It can be very frustrating having to sit in the house unable to go out as you are unsure of when the engineer will be expected to arrive.

SMS messages can also be used for sending general customer information such as details about usage and billing as well as helping customers stay informed and in control of their accounts. Even better, by sending details about energy usage allows customers to monitor and reduce their consumption, leading to more content customers.

Severn Trent Water has recently become the first utility supplier to provide non-Direct Debit customers with the ability to pay bills via a mobile payment application - Barclays Pingit. This helps customers pay bills simply and easily, helping improve the customer experience even further.

Mobile is certainly helping utility companies strengthen customer relationships in a variety of ways. Find out how energy suppliers can use mobile communications to build customer trust or read our Utilities section to find out more.

For further information regarding HSL Mobile, visit us at:

http://www.hslmobile.com

follow us on LinkedIn, @hslmobile, Facebook or Google+

or call us on +44 (0)1506 605 260

or email us at sales@hslmobile.com

Using SMS in Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are an important aspect of any business as they enhance relationships with customers and increase ROI. Sales teams can find information about a customer or prospect in one central location and managers can immediately find out how sales enquiries are progressing. As sales teams become increasing mobile, mobile CRM can hold a great deal of power and has been described by CRM Buyer as "decidedly one of the hottest trends for 2013".

Take A Byte specialise in all things booking related and run their own online CRM system called 'In-Contact'. They decided to add SMS services to allow businesses to send booking confirmations to their customers and send messages to their own staff. SMS messages are more likely to be read than any other form of communication so companies can have peace of mind that staff and customers are more than likely to have seen the message and can store it somewhere convenient - on their mobile phone which they can carry everywhere!

It was imperative that they were able to keep a record of exactly what had been sent and the cost of integrating text messages into their 'In-Contact' application was kept low. HSL's SMS service was perfect for this as it allowed Take A Byte to send a text message instantly from their application and to return a unique reference number to track the message to its final destination.

According to Damien Bhanji, Director of Take A Bye, "the best 2 things about the HSL SMS service are its speed and reliability." He also commented that, "It always makes me smile when we demo our system to potential customers and a message is sent from our application to their phone in less than 4 seconds."

SMS Expansion

Three years ago, Take a Byte recognised further opportunity to expand SMS services to their customers. Due to the nature of what they do, it was crucial that their customers could rely on their servers being operational 24/7. As a result of this, they decided to build a server monitoring application to alert their support staff immediately if there was a problem with a server. They needed the method of alerting staff to be a 100% reliable and therefore naturally turned to HSL's SMS services for the job. This has proved to be a great solution for minimising the down time of servers and therefore reducing the impact on service.

"Although the SMS service is only one part of the system it is much loved by the customers who use it."

Take A Byte have also launched a new service after several customers asked for the ability to send automatic SMS course reminders to their customers a set number of days before their course is due to start. As they stated "There is always a small proportion of people who forget that they have booked onto a course and this solution is designed to remind them so they don't forget."

Take A Byte have remained a valued HSL client for over 4 years and are committed to HSL for all their current and future SMS requirements. They have considered other SMS providers both at the beginning and whenever they review running costs. However, they find our prices very reasonable particularly when assessing the reliability of our service.

To find out more about how mobile communications can help enterprises around the world, please read our case studies

For further information regarding HSL, visit us at:

http://www.hslmobile.com   

follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter @hslmobile or Google+  

or call us on +44 (0)1506 605260

or email us at sales@haysystems.com