Utility companies interact with their customers almost every day. As a result, delivering positive customer experiences and acquiring high customer satisfaction are always major concerns for utility service providers. Most energy and utility companies prefer to have in-house customer support teams to meet these needs. However, some utility businesses look for an ideal BPO services provider to focus company resources on core competencies and reduce business operational costs.
A brief about utility call centers
Like all call centers, utility customer service providers are equally efficient in boosting customer experiences and bringing down churn rates. They use advanced tools and AI technologies to provide seamless support to customers, thereby helping businesses improve their bottom line.
How do BPO services providers help utility companies improve customer experiences?
Digital communication channels and self-service options are key to unlocking high customer satisfaction and high retention. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, customer expectations around digital interactions with customer support agents have accelerated massively. This is thanks to modern call centers that assist utility service providers in streamlining customer journeys and providing a peerless customer experience. Let’s explore how it is helping!
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Multiple ways to connect:
Customers are more likely to stay connected with a brand that offers multiple ways to connect. In this digital era, when people are more attached to their mobile devices and smartphones, their preferences lie between social media, live chat, web chat, text messages, email, and phone calls. Utility call centers acknowledge customers’ choices and provide several modes of communication to build high engagement.
Customers who have access to their preferred channels of communication with the support agents are more likely to repeat their purchase. This gives rise to high customer satisfaction, better customer retention, and, most importantly, a happy customer base which can help in generating good revenue. As a result, omnichannel call centers pay more attention to providing consistent services across all channels.
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Self-service options:
Apart from omnichannel solutions, customers also look for self-service options to avoid the long wait times and provide instant responses. According to a recent survey, 76% of customers try to resolve an issue before reaching out to any support agent. In addition, 56% of customers leave the brand that fails to deliver a high-quality customer experience. Hence, statistics show how important it is to consider customer preferences in order to obtain better retention rates.
Modern utility call center services providers offer self-service options so that customers can generate instant and accurate responses to their queries. They provide e-guides, e-tutorials, FAQs, instructional videos, and other informative content to help customers resolve their problems on their own. Therefore, connecting with these ideal BPO services providers can help utility businesses boost customer experiences to a great extent.
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Reducing wait times:
According to HubSpot, 90% of customers rate “immediate” responses with a five star. Whereas, for 60% of customers, the definition of “immediate” responses is generating answers within 10 minutes. Utility customers strictly follow this rule and avoid relying on brands that do not meet their satisfaction level.
Call centers these days leverage advanced tools and AI technologies to deliver instant and appropriate responses. However, some contact centers provider even use chatbots to generate quick answers for any simple to complex questions.
AI-driven tools are highly appreciated as they can manage queues, deliver automated responses, and conduct seamless workflows. Therefore, by outsourcing utility customer services to a modern call center, you can achieve a high satisfaction rate with improved average call handling times.
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Improving the first-contact-resolution rates:
One of the major goals of a call center service provider is to improve the first-contact-resolution rate (FCR). It is one of the key call center metrics that define how efficiently a call center agent can resolve a problem on the first communication.
Modern call centers utilize AI-enabled tools to ensure that customer queries are resolved on first contact. Moreover, they optimize agents’ performances by measuring their individual efficiencies and providing several training opportunities accordingly. In short, they use the best practices to increase first-contact-resolution rates in no time.
As long as the FCR rate is higher, call centers deliver better customer experiences. This shows call centers are pretty impactful when it comes to increasing the customer satisfaction level and achieving better retention rates.
Improve your CSAT scores and deliver better CX with utility call center outsourcing
There are numerous reasons to engage in outsourcing utility customer services to a reliable BPO services provider. These involve delivering instant responses to satisfy the customers, reducing operating costs, improving efficiencies, generating real-time reports and analytics, accessing to latest technologies, etc. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with concluding that the ideal utility call centers can maximize customer experiences and achieve high retention rates.
So, look for the best call center services for utility companies for your business and talk to their experts to learn more about outsourcing solutions.
