In 2020, communication with the housing and utility sector still leaves a lot to be desired. Although technology has gone a long way ahead, there are still queues to pay utility bills and meter readings are transmitted over the phone. Permenergosbyt PJSC went the way of getting closer to consumers and connected a chat centre. What happened and what results they achieved is the subject of our new article.
About the company
Permenergosbyt PJSC is a guaranteed supplier of electricity in the Perm region. The company settles about 1.3 million personal accounts of individuals and tens of thousands of organisations, from industrial enterprises to small businesses. In other words, the issue of communication with customers is undoubtedly the number one issue in the company's activities.
Problem
With the standard method of communication - by phone - the lines were constantly overloaded and adding more lines would have led to unnecessary costs. In order to relieve pressure on the call centre, management implemented a chat centre to connect with customers. Thanks to Chat2Desk, Permenergosbyt distributed incoming calls evenly over all communication channels and accelerated the processing of customer requests.
Widget
The company connected WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, VKontakte, Online Chat and placed all channels in a widget on the website. Now, if a customer goes to the website looking for a phone number, he/she finds the widget, chooses a convenient messenger and starts a dialogue.
Thanks to the widget, the company's customers can now reach the operators without waiting for a long time on the phone line.
Self-service menu
After a customer has opened a dialog with the company, a self-service menu appears with a welcome message, opening hours and the emergency phone number. The user then has three options to choose from: "submit readings", "check balance" and "contact operator". Already at this stage, users can decide on their own and the appeals are closed. The function of transmitting meter readings was to the user's liking and now the new option is used by 60% of customers.
Answer bot
If a customer's issue is not resolved using the self-service menu, an answer bot joins the dialogue. It reacts to the keywords in the message and gives the right answer. For example, a customer asks a question “How do I seal my meter?”. The answer comes back with information about where to go and what documents to submit. On average, the contact centre processes 20,000 messages each day. The chatbot helps “repel” such an attack.
Permenergosbyt employees processed tons of messages and collected the most popular questions. Each question had keywords, wording and different spelling variants. Permenergosbyt created a chatbot in the Chat2Desk constructor, in which they defined the resulting “keys” into sets of words. Then a different answer was prescribed for each group, which is received by users.
In this way, users can find out for themselves about
- The time for submitting readings;
- Tariffs;
- Conclusion or termination of a contract;
- Installation or replacement of meters;
- Preventive maintenance;
- Repairs or arrears;
Of course, if the user still does not receive an answer, there is the option of calling the operator and talking to a live person.
Templates
Permenergosbyt has used a template function to speed up operator responses. As soon as the operator starts to enter a message, the system offers the desired text - greetings, customer information or equipment installation rules. Therefore, operators do not need to search for the necessary information or copy text from a pre-prepared document.
Scripts
In order to automatically handle requests that the chatbot cannot handle, Permenergosbyt has connected Python scripts.
The script also
● pulls up the phone number from the client card in the CRM system via an API;
● reminds users about a payment;
● indicates errors in writing of the personal account, or readings of the meters;
Basic statistics
This option helped Permenergosbyt supervisors to monitor the work of the contact centre.
● Operator statuses showed which of the operators were online on a given day and hour. It helps to monitor daily routines, weekends, breaks and working hours.
● Operator events showed when an operator logged in or out, whether the chat was transferred to another operator.
● Overall response delays helped track efficiency and service quality. The report shows supervisors which operator was delayed in responding. If delays occur, it means there is a failure somewhere, so a debriefing should be conducted.
● Traffic on messengers told about the most popular messengers among users.
What Permenergosbyt has achieved
In a year of using Chat2Desk, Permenergosbyt managed to quadruple its messenger traffic.
Thanks to automation tools, the company was able to relieve operators and increase the efficiency and productivity of the contact centre. The new way of communicating with the company was appreciated by the residents of the Perm region. 60% of users who contact the company via messengers started to transmit meter readings in this channel. Every month, the number of such users increases by 32%.
Permenergosbyt's experience shows that users are willing to communicate with large companies via messengers. Chats and automation speed up communication, simplify communication and improve the customer experience.
Write to us in any convenient messenger via the widget in the corner of the screen and tell us about your company. And we'll suggest the right solution for your business.
