Calls, emails, letters, webchat: ‘Unwanted’ contact down 30%
“We’ve been able to make simple changes – within our existing systems and technology – which have had an immediate and positive impact, in reducing contact.” Customer Service Director.
Results
We’ve achieved some amazing results from our work with our Water Company client!
- 30% reduction in unwanted contact
- 60% reduction in calls from billing letters
- Supported a big jump in Ofwat league table
- Internal admin time reduced, by streamlining operational and billing templates
Challenge
Improve customer experiences across voice, digital, SMS, written and printed communication and channels, reducing frustrating, ‘unwanted’ contact, where possible.
Solution: Service Communications Programme
Improving service performance through consumer insights and ‘joining up’ inbound and outbound contact across Billing, Customer Service, Network Operations, Water Testing and Metering:
- Consumer research and insights – getting customer feedback on bills
- Creating and embedding a new tone of voice, to drive the right behaviours
- Templates and guidelines for bills, calls, emails, letters, webchat and printed comms
- Streamlining the IVR to improve call steering and self-service
- Communication training workshops, for call centre and field teams
- Improving outbound SMS effectiveness, with easy-to-use, template messages and URLs
- Redesigning printed leaflets to improve cash collection of bad debtors, but reduce unwanted contact around engineering works
- Digital, web service content – including FAQs and emergency alerts
Our Consumer research
To understand how bills impact customer behaviour and contact. These are some of the things that customers, we surveyed, told us:
- 41% of customers asked, said they had contacted/considered contacting their water company, because they couldn’t understand their bill
- 80% of these customers said they were happy with online-only bills
- 25% said their bills weren’t useful
Based on these customer insights, and with a better understanding of contact drivers, our key goals were to:
- Make bills and related comms, clearer and easier to understand (to reduce contact)
- Improve online help and best ways to contact
- Look at where the bill featured in overall contact and the customer’s journey
- Look at self-service options, with focus on home movers (the current SIM survey estimates this is the reason for 11% of calls)
- Better promotion of Direct Debit – in a way that’s more benefit-lead for customers
Unwanted contact is as frustrating for customers, as it is for companies – it continues to be a problem for most of our clients, within utilities and across many other sectors. If you’d like to know how we can reduce frustrating contact for you (while also improving customer satisfaction), drop us a line – hello@mazaru.com.