3 Major Considerations to Automate Your Utility’s Customer Service Strategy

July 16, 2020

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In an on-demand world where customers expect a response from a customer service rep at a few clicks of their mouse or a couple of taps on the screen of their favourite device, self-service for utilities is king. 

This is because customers now seek information and want answers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They don’t want to wait until the morning for your customer service team to get into the office, and they certainly don’t want to wait on hold for an hour while they wait to get through – they want to resolve their issues on the spot, in real-time.

Users want customer service to be authentic, seamless and consumer-centric, but most of all they want it to be easy. Self-service enables your utility to automate the entire customer service process, creating better experiences for your customers and saving time for your internal team.

To ensure your utility is able to automate its customer service online and create a world-class customer experience, it’s crucial that your customer engagement technology focuses on three things:

1 – User Experience (UX)

You may have exceptional customer service processes for your call center, which help your customer while reducing support time, but do you know how to transfer these procedures to web support? You need to build an easy-to-use, intuitive, attractive front-end UX design. Web pages need to be user-friendly, easy to understand and easy to take action on. Trust is built on good design, and trust is the starting point for any consumer using an online support system.

2 – Utility Customer Smart Forms

Smart forms are an important part of the user experience and it ensures your utility customers are able to send and receive the information they need quickly and conveniently through simple forms. Apart from visual design, forms need to collect the right information to initiate the support process. Extra questions may help with your service analytics but they also might prevent someone from completing the process.

3 – Workflows

Your speed at processing a customer request/ question depends on getting the form information to the right person in your organization. This is best accomplished with workflows, a back-end digital process that immediately routes form data automatically to the designated departments or individuals. Workflow can also be designed to trigger automatic responses and confirmation notifications back to customers. Workflows are initiated from form submissions as well as from other changes in data or events. 

How can SilverBlaze help with Smart Forms and Workflows?

Our uniquely designed Smart forms and Workflow software fit seamlessly with our Customer Portal for Utilities and help utility providers to automate customer interactions and customer service queries. 

Smart Forms, which can also be implemented and integrated with other portal solutions and back-end systems, provide customers with tools to connect with their utility provider 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year – and quickly receive a response. 

Utility customers can use smart forms for a wide range of customer queries, including outage reporting, move-out notifications, pre-authorized payments and much more. The result? Your utility is able to collect, process and respond to customer correspondence quickly and efficiently.

Best of all, these white-labelled forms can be completely customized to your organization’s branding and are designed with the user experience in mind across all devices.

By using Smart Forms and Workflow software for automated and real-time communication, your customers and your utility will receive benefits such as:

  • Customers will receive easy-to-understand and intuitive methods to provide important information to your utility.
  • Easy integration into your customer portal and other existing workflow processes.
  • Reduced customer wait times and a superior customer experience.
  • Automated routing of customer information to the proper channels, reducing strain on your internal processes and eliminated misplaced information. 

Want to learn more about how Smart Forms and Workflow software from SilverBlaze can improve your utilities customer experience, as well as save your company money? Contact our team of utility user experience experts today. We would love to answer any questions that you may have. 

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It’s time to stop worrying about all the issues that come with low customer engagement, and instead, transform your operations to become the leading utility company in your area.

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