How your utility customers view your business is becoming increasingly important, unhappy customers are the result of bad service and, in an increasingly connected world, negative online reviews are aplenty.
But while this digital world can damage the reputation of an inefficient organization, it can also help completely transform a company’s business processes to be significantly more effective.
It is easy to think your business has tapped the full potential of digital technology, but many companies are still failing to complete this successful transformation.
A proper digital transformation should eliminate inefficiencies, revolutionize the way your organization collects, accesses and shares information, and completely automate your approach to customer service.
Here are four signs to look out for that may suggest your business is not yet truly digitally transformed:
1 – Communication break-down
One of the most vital aspects of any business is internal communication. Teams, departments and individuals must receive the correct information if they are to make the right business decisions.
When it comes to customer service, it’s essential that customer queries are sent directly to the appropriate department or individual, and that issues are resolved as fast as possible.
When information is limited and inefficiently passed around the company, think unorganized emails, it can be hard to make informed decisions. Management teams and customer service representatives will be forced to make ill-informed decisions and customer queries will often get ignored.
When your processes are truly transformed, everyone on your team will know exactly where they can access up-to-date information. Better and immediate access to information means everyone can perform their job, without costly barriers and miscommunication holding them back.
2 – Low customer engagement
The digital world has changed how customers expect to engage with a company. Developing a relationship and a two-way dialogue with the consumer is becoming increasingly important. If your utility hasn’t created this increased engagement then you’re still working in the past.
Your utility should be aiming to provide customers with a consistent experience across various touchpoints. Take Alectra Utilities for example. Alectra has implemented innovative software from other companies to significantly improve the way they interact with their customers.
Customer interaction for utility providers should include new technology such as push notifications and alerts, outage notifications, accurate billing information, as well as energy usage and analytics.
Your customers want personalized experiences. They want to easily receive information across all channels of communications. They want information that improves the way they interact with their utilities, information that makes their life easier and information that helps them to save time and money. If you’re not offering this, you’re behind.
3 – Manual business processes over automated ones
An automated approach to customer service means your utility can provide consumers with a self-service platform that significantly reduces customer effort, while at the same time improving the customer experience.
Automated forms will capture data and automatically direct customer queries to the correct department, meaning fast issue resolutions, reduced customer effort and a happier end-user.
Manual processes, on the other hand, result in bad customer experiences. Queries get lost along the way, customer service representatives receive bad or wrong information, issues get sent to wrong departments and customer issues get pushed to the bottom of the pile – or sometimes never even answered.
4 – An increasing number of complaints
If you find that your utility is receiving an increasing number of complaints, or the complaints are simply not decreasing, then it’s probably true that the digital transformation of your business hasn’t gone to plan.
What can digital transformation do for you?
Do any of these sound familiar? If so, it’s more than likely that your utility could do with a digital transformation – SilverBlaze’s Customer Portal for Utilities, Smart Forms module with workflow software is here to help.
Our software is designed to seamlessly integrate into a utility provider’s current business practices, helping to automate customer interactions around the clock.
Typical applications include outage reporting, billing notifications, pre-authorized payments and much more. This enables your utility to collect, process and respond to customer correspondence quickly and efficiently.
Contact SilverBlaze today to learn how our Customer Portal for utilities can automate your business processes and provide a better customer experience.
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