Utility Week

26 | 22ND - 28TH NOVEMBER 2019 | UTILITY WEEK Customers Case study A t a time when the focus is on finalis- ing PR19 determinations and moving into the next asset management plan period, AMP7, it can be all too easy to forget just how water company operations have moved on in this spending period. Not so, however, at Severn Trent, where digital transformation of customer engage- ment has delivered impressive results for business efficiency and customer satisfaction. "If you think about where we started from in this regulatory period, we were mainly telephony or white mail," reflects Hilary Ben- nett, head of customer contact. "That is how customers interacted with us five years ago. They either called us or they wrote to us. We did have email as a channel, but it was very under-utilised. "Today, we are going to end AMP6 in a much more digital environment – a‹er going through a huge amount of transformation based on listening to and understanding our customers' and how they want to interact with us. "We are now open 24/7, 365 days a year, the first water company to do so. We have a much higher digital presence than we had before, on all social channels, for example. And in our 24/7 centre we've multi-skilled some of our night shi‹ in that centre to be able to deal with queries either over the phone or via webchat." Geographic spread Severn Trent is the second-largest water business in England and Wales, serving eight million customers in diverse areas from Birmingham and Leicester to rural locations in the Peak District. Thanks to its digital transformation, 1.8 million customers are now registered on web self-service, almost half of its 4.3 mil- lion customer connections. So far this year, £59 million has been processed through payment functions, and more than 855,000 transactions have been completed. "That's 855,000 fewer contacts into our contact cen- tre," says Bennett. Customer interaction is enabled across a whole range of channels – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, telephony, webchat, email or text. Text is particularly useful, says Bennett, in situations where customers are at work and want to be kept informed if there has been a problem with their water supply, for example, and when it has been fixed. "More customers are choosing to com- municate through our digital channels," she says, "and we've seen a 39 per cent growth in demand for webchat. In the past year Twit- ter followers have gone up by almost 20 per cent and there's been a 600 per cent increase Make every contact count How do you boost customer ratings while halving the cost of servicing customers? In the second of a series of case studies on customer engagement, Hilary Bennett, head of customer contact at Severn Trent, lets Denise Chevin into a few secrets.

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