SITEL
SITEL: Unlocking Customer Potential for Energy and Utilities Companies SITEL, the world’s leading provider of outsourced customer support services, empowers companies to grow by optimizing contact center performance and unlocking customer potential. SITEL designs, implements, and operates multichannel contact centers to enhance company performance and growth. SITEL manages more than 1.5 million customer contacts per day via the telephone, Web, email, fax, and traditional mail. SITEL employees operate contact centers in 20 countries, offering services in 25 languages and dialects.
Most utility customers are used to receiving one communication every month – a bill. As a result of deregulation, however, energy and utilities companies now face increasing competition on their customer care model. Industry consolidation continues to build economies of scale and increase operational efficiency, but while this strategy enables cost-cutting, leading providers have quickly realized that they must differentiate themselves by providing more than simply a product at a competitive price. No longer free to offer just one standard level of service, utilities need to be more responsive than ever to the demands of customers – in this environment, the winning companies will be those that successfully address individual customers’ energy and utility needs and offer added value. SITEL recognizes that each customer contact, inquir y and ser vice call is a chance to communicate value and build a relationship with your customers – the essence of CRM. We are exper ts at designing, building, and running integrated, multichannel contact centers that help companies reduce costs, drive sales, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Over the past 15 years, SITEL has substantially grown and developed its competency to serve the energy and utilities industries. Developed in close collaboration with our clients and partners, SITEL’s contact center solutions for energy and utilities companies enable these organizations to manage and optimize customer relationships across multiple touch points, delivering reduced operating costs and increased value per customer contact.
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Solutions for Energy and Utilities
Strategic Advantages
Customer Care Focused on enhancing the customer experience, our customer care ser vices range from utilizing self-ser vice products for frequently asked questions and using Web chat sessions for complex problems to employing highly trained technicians for product suppor t. We specialize in the design and deliver y of complex, multichannel solutions, including the use of costcompetitive offshore locations. We act as the voice of the customer to our clients, providing valuable, real-time feedback on new products or campaigns.
From a strategic standpoint, SITEL’s outsourcing solutions allow companies to focus on their core businesses while we provide value-added customer contact ser vices in suppor t of their CRM strategies. By leveraging SITEL’s world-class infrastructure and exper tise, our clients additionally minimize project risks and improve time to market, helping them achieve a competitive advantage. Operationally, SITEL provides a comprehensive suite of ser vices and technologies, suppor ted by best practices in human resources and operations management. This results in our clients achieving a tailored solution with tremendous resource leverage. SITEL’s commitment to ongoing technology and process innovation allows our clients to make more effective use of their capital expenditures. A leading global provider of integrated contact center services to companies in the energy and utilities industr y, as well as other regulated and deregulated competitive ser vice markets, SITEL demonstrates its position as a market leader by providing flexible and scalable customer management solutions that suppor t our clients’ strategic goals and enable unrivaled business responsiveness. For more information about SITEL’s contact center solutions for energy and utilities, please contact Matt Sanders or Kari Kieski at 1.800.267.2772, or visit us on the Web at www.sitel.com.
Risk Management SITEL also offers risk management solutions (credit and collections) for our energy and utilities clients, as well as other integrated contact center services. Customer Acquisition and Retention SITEL’s customer acquisition services include prospect identification, campaign management, lead generation, and fulfillment. In coordination with our clients’ sales objectives, we implement and execute marketing campaigns using multichannel communications in coordination with advertising and promotional sales programs. By tracking customer value over time against the cost of acquisition, we help our clients improve the quality and value of new customers while reducing the total cost of acquisition. Centralized Appointment Management Focused on improving the efficiency of retail customer appointment-setting procedures for utility clients, SITEL has the ability to implement custom diar y management tools that inter face with our clients’ own contact management systems in order to reduce delays between initial customer contacts and field appointment scheduling with technical advisers, improving the conversion of lead inquiries to appointments and thereby increasing sales potential. (See case study.)
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Case Study: SITEL Program Ignites British Gas’ Sales Client Overview Following deregulation in 1997, the utilities market in the United Kingdom has become highly competitive, showing steady growth year after year. British Gas, a subsidiar y of the Centrica group, is leading the way within this increasingly liberalized market. As Great Britain’s leading domestic gas supplier and the nation’s fastest growing domestic electricity supplier, British Gas ser vices millions of consumers each day.
The company recognizes the value of putting “the comfor t of the customer first.” Core to the ser vice offering is the sale of consumer products, such as central heating and boilers, to new and existing customers. Efficiency, speed, and innovation have become key British Gas attributes, helping the company to build and maintain strong customer relationships.
The Business Case To remain competitive in a deregulated industry, British Gas needed to improve the efficiency of its customer appointment-setting procedure. Customer inquiries and appointments were previously coordinated by several phone calls. Once a customer had spoken to a British Gas representative, that initial representative would telephone a technical adviser, who would in turn contact the customer again to set up an appointment. A more effective diar y process was required. Customers booking appointments had experienced significant delays between the initial point of contact and the technical adviser’s visit. British Gas sought to reduce this delay, which had resulted in 10 percent of its customers still awaiting a visit from a technical advisor after eight weeks. Recognizing the need to offer the customer more, British Gas harnessed the oppor tunity to optimize new technology. To achieve this, British Gas chose SITEL, the world’s leading outsourced customer contact exper t. SITEL’s Solution The proposed solution was to produce diary management software that could inter face with British Gas’ own system. To deliver high levels of operational competence and quality, SITEL created CHAMP – the Central Heating Appointment Making Project. In addition to reducing the delay between initial customer contact and an appointment being made with a technical adviser, the campaign aimed to improve the conversion of lead inquiries to appointments, thereby increasing the likelihood of sales. Evolving over three successful years of par tnership, SITEL’s CHAMP is helping to maximize sales potential. The SITEL solution blends tactical customer contact and fills the technical adviser’s diar y to maintain a balanced lead mix. Customers are called at times specified by personal response, and “old” leads are
warmed through proactive calling. Utilizing and applying Siebel-brand business tools to prioritize “hot” leads, the solution offers functionality to allow the booking of shor t-dated appointments within diaries that are “full.” CHAMP’s success has seen the of fering extended to cover fur ther products within the consumer central heating spectrum. Over 400 technical advisers and home sales consultants now benefit from SITEL’s experience and exper tise. It is predicted that e-business will have a profound impact on the utility industries within the next five years. SITEL and British Gas have recognized this new route to market and, in response, have benchmarked a successful Web ser vicing initiative. Their joint proactive strategy has resulted in SITEL customer ser vice professionals (CSPs) responding to customer inquiries more ef ficiently, enhancing customer comfor t and boosting sales potential.
The Result The success of CHAMP has been a major factor in helping British Gas consistently exceed its sales targets. In the first year of operation, the conversion of leads improved dramatically, resulting in more than 65,000 extra appointments from 33,000 fewer leads. The conversion rate continues to improve – up by nearly 20 percent in 2000. SITEL has evolved its application base on CHAMP and has moved from in-house diar y solutions to full diar y functionality using Siebel call center applications. This has improved ser vice quality and decreased training time for CSPs. British Gas staff can now access the Web browser instantly and communicate using real-time information. Sales appointments can be booked instantly as well, with sales managers having access to Web-based, up-to-theminute repor ting. The success of CHAMP has opened the world of customer potential within British Gas and Centrica. SITEL now provides ser vices on behalf of other Centrica business units including Home Security, The AA and British Gas Trading. By optimizing business goals and understanding customer needs, SITEL has managed the British Gas customer experience. British Gas and SITEL – putting “the comfor t of the customer first.” ■
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Solution Provider
www.sitel.com
CONTACT INFORMATION James F. Lynch Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bill Fairfield Executive VP Dale Saville Executive VP Dale Schuster Executive VP James E. Stevenson, Jr. Executive VP SITEL Worldwide Headquarters 111 South Calvert Street, Suite 1900 Baltimore, MD 21202 Phone 410.246.1505 Toll-Free 1.800.445.6600 BUSINESS CONTACT
North America Energy and Utilities Group
[email protected] Matt Sanders VP Business Development North America Energy and Utilities Group Phone 800.267.2772 Kari Kieski VP Business Development North America Energy and Utilities Group Phone 800.267.2772
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