Utility Week

Customers mented live web chats to real employees. They also introduced callbacks. "If they're surprised that they've got through to us so easily and quickly and have got through to a human who knows how to deal with their complaints straight away, you've immediately taken a big step forward in getting that trust." Localz vice president of sales, EMEA, Gary Rosier-Taylor echoes this point: "There are two ways for organisations to build trust with customers. "Firstly, rather than customers having to call and chase companies to ƒ nd out when engineers will arrive, we should be able to give them a more accurate view of what their day will look like. The second element is being able to react and respond to issues in a timely manner. It's not about causing an issue, but how it is dealt with that has the greater impact on customer satisfaction and trust in a brand." Utility Warehouse's Finnegan expands on this. "The feedback loop is speeding up and it's much more public in the digital world due to platforms like Trustpilot, which ena- ble you to get a stream of feedback almost on a live basis." The speed of response is something that can result in tangible business beneƒ ts for suppliers, including reduced call cen- tre costs, lower customer churn and creat- ing trust with larger customers so they opt into half-hourly meter reads that provide increased accuracy for both sides. For Coates-Smith, these tangible ben- eƒ ts have included a signiƒ cant rise in Insite Energy's Trustpilot scores, which pre- pandemic, he says were in the range of "one and two stars". A‰ er the exercise they are now "number one" in the market for heat networks and "number seven" in energy overall. Elsewhere, Utilita's Filler has introduced post-call and post-chat surveys where the business collects Net Promoter Score (NPS) data and captures customer feedback infor- mation on customer complaints, which is then sent to the customer experience team to follow up. He says this process "makes a huge dif- ference" to the business, improving its NPS, which in turn has reduced customer churn. Elsewhere, they are investing in new tech- nology to try to get a better understanding of their customer complaints, he says. "We've recently started rolling out the use of speech analytics to really help us drill down on speciƒ c phrases on every single call to understand what's causing poor or good sentiment and what customer that links back'to." He adds: "The more we leverage that to get more automated and bespoke outputs, reducing the requirement to manually listen to calls, the better. We have so much data on customers, like every energy company does, but it's about how you automate its collec- tion and then link that data together so you can get the most beneƒ t. "We don't have to have a customer expe- rience team of 100 people if we can have a team of 10 people who provide far more ben- eƒ cial and focussed feedback." A look ahead The ƒ nal goal for suppliers is to be able to use this wealth of data to feedback into the process, creating con- tinuous improvement to their response, and as consequence produc- ing happier customers and generating cost savings. With the sec- tor pushing hard towards its 2025 smart meter goal, trust between con- sumers and suppliers has never been more important. As with any complex new tech- nology, smart meters and the intricate communica- tion network they connect to have had teething prob- lems, but keeping customers informed will go a long way to reducing complaints and ensur- ing a smooth rollout. As an independent, "consumer champion" delivering communications around smart meters, building customer trust is a top agenda for Smart Energy GB, says Cheesewright. "We hope that by explaining in detail the largely positive [things in association with In association with I N S I G H T R E P O R T Nailing the feedback loop: how to get ahead of smart metering complaints In this report Introduction Complaints: The root of the problem Nailing the feedback loop A look ahead V I E W P O I N T Empowering customers through transparent accurate information In association with Download the report Download the report Nailing the Feedback Loop: How to Get Ahead of Smart Metering Complaints free at: https://utilityweek.co.uk/feedback- loops-how-to-get-ahead-of-smart-metering-complaints/ about smart meters] as well as being as honest as possible about the diš culties [faced], we will be heard and listened to. We're very conscious of that and we try to paint as clear a picture as possible to make sure we're genuinely trustworthy," he says. UTILITY WEEK | DECEMBER 2021 | 33

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