Utilities face a challenge. Usability can help.
Rosalind Barden
Principal Consultant,
Energy & Utilties Division, Logica UK Limited,
Betjeman House,
104 Hills Road,
Cambridge, CB2 1LQ, UK
In April 1996, competition was introduced into the UK domestic gas market, British Gas, once the sole supplier to 19 million homes, now faces over 20 rivals and up to 25% of customers have already opted for a new supplier.
In September of this year, the domestic electricity market will open to competition. As well as the 14 regional electricity companies, British Gas is already promoting itself as an electricity supplier. In addition, other non energy companies are introducing special deals for their customers. For example, retailers such as Tesco are already signing up recruits, the Trades Union Congress has set up 'Union Energy' to sell fuel to its members and the Daily Telegraph Newspaper has a readers' promotion for 'dual fuel'.
The energy suppliers as well as facing the demands of the competitive market are also regulated. There are rules of competition to be obeyed and pressure from the regulator to increase service and reduce costs.
Call centres play a pivotal rôle in looking after utility customers, but in a changing market there are a number of key challenges
An old utility company knew that the customer had no choice over supplier
focus on own procedures
customers come and go as move in and out of area
maintained a history of the meter supply and distribution dealt with by the same company
dealt with single product ie gas or electricity with one or two tariffs available
often unable to keep up with customer queries and requests leading to long waits large numbers of staff often with many years of experience of company procedures
approximately half the customers do not pay their bills on time
A modern utility company appreciates that the customer has freedom of choice
focus on customer service
customers come and go as other companies make better offers
maintains a history of customer contact even when the customer moves house regulator demands separation of supply and distribution
sells a multitude of products and tariffs and must be able to answer any customer query immediately
must respond quickly to customer queries pressure to reduce staff numbers, high turnover in call centre staff, ever changing ways of working
customers settle bills automatically
As well as having to deal with a competitive market, those now trading in energy must understand that consumers do not treat electricity and gas as commodities. Most people regard energy as something that is 'always there'.
The successful companies will be those that can differentiate themselves in an apparently undifferentiated market. What they need to sell is the 'wrapper' around the core energy products. This wrapper consists of both extra offerings, such as boiler maintenance and insurance, and high quality customer service.
To assist in this, within the Energy and Utilities Division of Logica, we have developed Flair. This is our model of the architecture for a 21st Century Energy Supplier. This talk will show the importance that usability in the call centre user interface is playing in developing the Flair approach.
HCI techniques have been used to ensure a smooth path for the customer, supporting the call centre agent with appropriate information as customers request it. Good usability practice has also been employed to support customer management principles such as providing helpful and informed responses to the customer while seeking the right opportunities for cross selling and up selling.
To achieve this we have concentrated on designing tasks that enable an agent to follow a path that is appropriate to the needs and requests of the customer being served. Much effort has been devoted to the presentation of such processes that will make sense to both the inexperienced agent and to the member of staff who has 20 years' service.
In what will be a fast changing world, with a short time to market of new products, new tariffs and combined packages, it is essential that services can be introduced with a short lead time. This means that not only must it be possible to provide the software quickly, but training time for agents must be kept to a minimum.
In support of these demands, we have used a consistent and simple user interface. It is based on an allocation of specific areas of the window to various aspects:access to functions, customer information, task details. Each task is presented in a pseudo 'wizard', following through in steps where the route taken depends upon the information provided by the customer in both this conversation and in previous ones. The talk will describe our overall approach to structuring a 21st century energy supply company, present example business processes and show how these have been implemented in our model. Examples of the direct application of these ideas to energy suppliers already in the market will be quoted throughout.
