Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 11TH - 17TH OCTOBER 2019 | 27 Customers M artin Taylor has been in the van- guard of omni-channel customer engagement as co-founder and deputy chief executive of cloud contact centre technology provider Content Guru. In the utility sector, that momentum started over a decade ago when Content Guru began working with distribution network operator UK Power Networks to improve customer services using its storm- based platform. Since then, the partner- ship has continued to flourish and other distribution networks have also turned to the platform provider, amounting to 80 per cent of the UK's population. "If your lights go out, your communications with your network provider all takes place, end to end, using our technology," explains Taylor. He believes that water companies in particular could benefit by following the energy networks' lead with seamless omni- channel experience. He says good service is all about mapping the customer journey and making sure that all the touch points are integrated seamlessly. So, what might be a good omni-channel service for a water company? Taylor maps out two possible customer journeys: "Let's say your water is cut off – a frozen pipe has burst. In a good omni-channel scenario, I could perhaps go online and see that there was a problem in my area, which might save me from contacting anybody in the first place. "From that, I could perhaps have a chatbot interaction, or a chat with a per- son, but online in both cases. The dialogue could then be 'whereabouts are you, how long has it been off ', for example, and we could get to an outcome, without me talking to anybody, because the chatbot is connected to information systems that tell the water company about the outage. I can then get up to date information about the issue, acknowledgement that it exists, and when it can be fixed. And perhaps information on how or where I can receive some water in the meantime. "So that could be one method. I may have called up, expecting to speak to somebody, but it's very busy because lots of people have had their water cut off at the same time." He continues: "So again, I can go into question and answer about where I live, my postcode, my nearest town exactly, all on the phone. I could then be told what the water situation is, it's going to be off until this time tomorrow or whatever, and I could then receive a text on my phone, which may include a link showing me where I can get some bottled water." Levels of sophistication Taylor paints another customer journey and says that the system can be even more sophisticated, automatically alerting the water company if it recognises a call from, say a care home, which could then be directed straight to the "vulnerable users queue", where the caller can talk to an agent. "That's something we do already for electric companies, and with our NHS call system, and absolutely something we can do for water as well. "We've just mapped two different customer journeys: one a normal user, and one a vulnerable consumer. The job of customer journey mapping is to look at each different engagement scenario and to map out what should happen in each different one. And those are effectively laid out in a flow chart using this methodology, and that chart will have decision points, and the ability to route the flow in different directions, based on what happens." Content Guru sets up the different cus- tomer journeys to begin with but typically utility company users embed the journey into their systems with in-built tools. AI technology has added more capabil- ity to the system. "In the example of a power outage, when the caller mentions the location they live in, relevant informa- tion pops up on the screen of the person helping, so they can then intelligently and instantly respond, without wasting the 15-20 per cent of time that is normally spent looking things up." A further AI advancement is sentiment recognition. "For example, we might see from our sentiment analysis that someone is very angry, and we can then put them through to someone who is trained to deal with angry people, and we can advise that person to keep the sentences short, not offer too many options. Because when peo- ple are angry, their psychological make-up changes, and they can only absorb very short bits of information." Image recognition is another aspect that could benefit utility firms, says Taylor. "For example, someone could send in a picture of a broken pipe, or a junction box, and the utility company will then know whether that pipe is theirs, or belongs to someone else, and can direct the caller to the appropriate utility company, without involving a call agent." He concludes: "While utilities are doing well in many respects, they still have more things they can absorb from other indus- tries, such as transport and healthcare – whether that is to stave off regulators or to deliver competitive advantage." n Mapping customer journeys is essential Martin Taylor, the co-founder and deputy chief executive of Content Guru, tells Utility Week that utilities can learn from other sectors about how to improve customer experience. Brought to you in association with

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