Automate Your Utility’s Customer Service with Smart Forms and Workflow

December 24, 2020

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In an on-demand world where customers can access information at their fingertips, one of the most transformative ways to improve the utility customer experience is through the introduction of self-service options.

Today’s customers want immediate access to information at their convenience, meaning from their favourite devices and at a speed that is far greater than that of traditional phone support. Web support is now the preferred communication tool for many consumers in-and-outside of the utilities industry. 

With that in mind, how can your utility automate its customer service to seamlessly handle online service requests, while still retaining the authentic, smooth and human-centric customer experience that utility consumers  have come to expect?

The short answer is to implement  smart forms and workflow. These are two types of utility customer engagement software that can completely transform the customer experience and significantly improve customer engagement by expanding service offerings. 

What are smart forms and workflow?

Smart forms work to provide customers with the tools they need to connect with their utility provider 24/7, 365 days a year, and quickly receive a response to resolve their query. This alone improves the customer experience and creates more satisfied customers.

Typical applications of smart forms include: 

  • Outage reporting
  • Move-out notifications
  • Pre-authorized payments
  • Transfer of Service(s)
  • And much more

All these functions allow your utility to collect, process and respond to customer correspondence quickly and efficiently. Meanwhile, workflow software automated these queries to ensure they are directed to the appropriate person or department within your utility. 

The combination of smart forms and workflow provides your utility with the tools and information you need to engineer online customer services that achieve high levels of customer satisfaction while delivering a positive ROI for your business.

How smart forms and workflow improve the utility customer experience

Smart forms and workflow software focus on three main areas that help optimize and improve your utility’s customer experience: 

  1. User Experience (UX) – When offering customer support online, it’s crucial to build easy-to-use, intuitive and attractive designs that create a superior user experience (UX). Web pages should be user-friendly, easy to understand and make it simple to take desired actions. That’s exactly what smart forms and workflow were built to achieve. 
  2. Utility Customer Forms – Smart forms are an important aspect of the utility customer experience due to their seamlessly visual design and their ability to collect the right information to initiate the support process.This self-servicing function empowers utility users to identify and initiate queries on their own.
  3. Workflows – Your speed at processing a customer request or question depends on getting the form information to the right person within your organization. This is best accomplished with workflows, a back-end digital process that immediately routes form data automatically to designated departments or individuals. Workflows can also be designed to trigger automatic responses and confirmation notifications back to customers. 

How SilverBlaze can help

SilverBlaze has designed smart forms and workflow software that have been built to  seamlessly fit into our award-winning Customer Portal for Utilities solution – or implemented and integrated with other back-end systems, if preferred. 

Our smart forms are white labelled, allowing your utility to completely customize them to match your branding. Not only that, but they are designed with the user experience in mind – to look great on both mobile and desktop devices, as well as created with a faster response rate and user-friendly interface in mind for increased customer satisfaction. 

Meanwhile, the SilverBlaze workflow software is a ‘behind-the-scenes’ solution that links customer data, messages, emails and other information to create automatic and real-time digital communications. 

The combination of the SilverBlaze Smart Forms and Workflow solutions will help your utility: 

  • Offer customers an easy-to-understand, intuitive method to quickly and conveniently provide important information.
  • Immediately route customer information through the proper channels, eliminating misplaced information.
  • Reduce customer wait times, and ensure service tasks are dealt with in a more efficient manner.
  • And many other benefits!

 

Want to find out more? Contact SilverBlaze today. Our team of utility customer experience experts would love to discuss with you the benefits of the implementation of smart forms and workflow software solutions. 

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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