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UTILITY WEEK | 7TH - 13TH FEBRUARY 2020 | 27 Customers never made it o the bottom two rungs of the ladder, which measures performance across 13 segments of the economy. At the summit, ICS marketing director Brian Weston shared insights from the lat- est iteration of the Index, released in Janu- ary this year. He revealed that while water utilities exceed the cross-sector average for complaints handling, energy and water com- panies generally fall behind in every dimen- sion of satisfaction covered by the survey. Furthermore, while utilities had been making some steady satisfaction gains between 2015 and 2017, they have since lost ground and currently sit almost 3 index points below their best performance and 4.6 index points behind the cross-sector average. Lower than average levels of consumer trust in utilities are certainly part of this unedifying picture. But far more prominent in the UKCSI is customer dissatisfaction with utilities' ability to achieve "right Œ rst time" issue resolution for customers. This is a worry – in that it's a commonly accepted service fundamental that essential service providers really ought to be great at. But it's also reassuring, since recent leaps in contact centre technology and so- called omni-channel service mean utili- ties have some great new tools available to them that could signiŒ cantly alter customer experiences. Presentations from technology partners at Utility Week's Customer Summit empha- sised this opportunity with insights into best practice for "inclusive service design" on digital platforms, the importance of enabling great "self-serve" experiences wherever pos- sible and the opportunities for productivity and service professionalism opened up by advances in Natural Language Processing. The important thing about applying these technologies, it was stressed, is not to think that they defer responsibility for providing "human" service – especially for customers experiencing very niche problems or with very particular needs. The point about technology – coupled with e ective use of customer data – is that it should be used to enable creative, person- alised service en masse or to free up time and resource to provide one-to-one bespoke service for moments that matter. A great demonstration of the Œ rst point was provided by Octopus Energy's Rebecca Dibb-Simkin, who explained how the chal- lenger brand had stumbled on research which showed the majority of people are most heavily inš uenced by music at the age of 14. Using this insight, the company took the initiative to build an algorithm which matches customer date of birth information continued overleaf with the number one single on release at the time they turned 14. If it was necessary to place that customer on hold during a call, this is the music that will play to Œ ll the hold›time. There's no doubt this is something of a gimmick, and of course not every cus- tomer was delighted with their allocated hit. But the approach to using technology as a bridge to help connect with customers on a personal level is a striking one that seems to set Octopus apart from many more traditional utilities. It was Octopus, too, which showed how to e ectively match technology with an organisational structure that maximises human service potential. The company has a š at structure that focuses on empowering "energy specialists" or frontline service sta • Customer experiences one touchpoint or receives messages on one channel only • One message: one channel • A brand is only sending information using one channel Single Channel Multi Channel Omni Channel Product Centric Customer Centric Engagement Made Easy Interaction Analytics Process Primary Uses Unstructured Conversations Structure Customer Conversations Create Metadata File Apply Proprietary Algorithms Analyse Metadata Present Findings SPEAKER FOCUS WHY CREATE AN OMNI-CHANNEL ENVIRONMENT? INTERACTION ANALYSIS Basic analysis of customer-contact agent interactions can help highlight imbalances in interactions – for example highlighting where there is a high percentage of "talk-over" – and boost service professionalism as well as productivity. What's the di• erence between multi-channel and omni-channel customer experiences? A presentation from Content Guru's Shub Naha made sense of the jargon. Brought to you in association with Single Channel Multi Channel Omni Channel Product Centric Customer Centric • Customer sees multiple touchpoints acting independently • Multiple different touchpoints not always the same message • A brand operations exist in technical and functional silos • Customer experiences a brand – not a channel within a brand • The same message and brand image: multiple channels • Consistent brand image & message creates a sense of familiarity and relationship Discovery Root cause analysis Trend analysis Analaytics-enabled quality management Script adherence Regulatory compliance Emotion/sentiment analysis