£2M saved over 5 years with new self-service IVR handling 25% of all calls

Water Utility IVR Case Study

| www.voxgen.com

| www.voxgen.com

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Anglian Water is the largest water and wastewater company in England and Wales by geographical area. The company supplies over 1.1 billion litres of water every single day to over 5.3 million domestic and business customers across an area of 27,500 square km. Its huge region stretches from the Humber north of Grimsby, to the Thames estuary and then from Buckinghamshire to Lowestoft on the east coast.

£2M SAVED OVER 5 YEARS WITH NEW SELF-SERVICE IVR HANDLING 25% OF ALL CALLS

WATER UTILITY IVR CASE STUDY | 01

| www.voxgen.com

THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE

Delivering high quality customer service has always been important to Anglian Water, but the introduction of Ofwat’s Service Incentive Mechanism (SIM) - which financially rewards good and penalises poor customer service - really bought this to the fore.

Anglian and its consulting partner, Capgemini, tasked VoxGen with designing and implementing a new voice self-service solution which would enhance the customer service experience, increase customer satisfaction and reduce costs. The solution would need to equip Anglian to be a leading water supplier and meet their SIM regulatory challenge by achieving four key objectives:

WATER UTILITY IVR CASE STUDY | 02

Optimise the level of service for Anglian’s 2.2 million billing calls per annum.

Ensure customer satisfaction – Anglian aim for 100% ‘Very satisfied’ customers.

Reduce the cost to serve.

Prioritise cash collection and debt reduction.

| www.voxgen.com

WATER UTILITY IVR CASE STUDY | 03

In addition, the solution needed to be flexible to support customer needs and future plans:

Be acceptable to a wide range of customers; Anglian’s customer demographics range from 16 to 90 year olds.

Support Anglian’s move to a VOIP-based telephony platform.

Enable the integration of emerging channels,including social media.

5.3mdomestic and business customers

2.2mbilling calls per annum

Martyn Oakley, Customer Service Director, Anglian Water

| www.voxgen.com

Our goal is nothing less than 100 percent customer satisfaction. We want to be renowned for doing things right first time and minimising customer effort.The phone is still the overwhelming contact channel of choice, so it’s vital that we continuously look for ways of improving the customer service experience.

“

”

| www.voxgen.com

The solution also incorporates a business intelligence dashboard that provides real-time reporting. This gives Anglian insight into what customers are calling about, the number of successful self-service transactions, repeat call behaviour and cost savings being achieved. This in turn helps to plan resources and help link billing and marketing activity with call demand from specific customer types.

The solution was built, tested and delivered using a dynamic piloting and rapid evolution approach. This iterative approach, involved working directly with Anglian’s customers and front line team, to ensure the solution delivered real business benefits that increased over time with every system iteration.

So what’s planned for the future? The system will continue to evolve, with one area of focus being to the use of data to personalise the customer experience for different customer types. Other channels, including social media, can be integrated in the future, in line with Anglian’s service vision.

THE SOLUTION

A new front-end, speech-enabled IVR offers callers enhanced, customer friendly, self-service options including card payments, Direct Debits and change of address (“move in, move out”).

A smoother experience for customers, with shorter call handling time has been achieved with CRM and CTI to authenticate customers (identify & verify them). Essentially, customers are asked for their details just once and everything else is dealt with. This leaves agents with ‘extra’ time to share tips on water saving, or cost saving, measures which in turn has driven customer satisfaction up.

This benefit further extends by using CRM with data-driven (flag-based) routing. Given the recessionary focus on effective cash collection, this flag-based routing is vital. It guarantees that debt enquiries are routed to the most skilled agents, who can handle calls with experience and empathy, and ensure a good outcome for both customers and Anglian.

WATER UTILITY IVR CASE STUDY | 06

| www.voxgen.com

KEY FEATURES

The key features of the solution include:

‘Customer designed’ methodology and usability testing to design the system around customer needs and ensure their satisfaction.

Dynamic piloting: Adapted at launch to deal with any glitches in the system, ensuring customer and business needs were met.

Flag-based routing to tailor customer service to different customer groups, such as billing and debt collection.

Integrated with CRM, CTI and billing system to ensure an easy, smooth experience that doesn’t require customers to repeat information.

Hosted, scalable, platform ensuring reliabilityof service, 24x7x365.

Multichannel payment capability, handling payments securely in IVR, online and via agents.

Reports: Online dashboard providing real-time view of self-service performance, business benefit, customer insight and customer journeys.

Business case and outcomes focused: Fees are linked to achievement of agreed goals.

Managed service: Planned updates ensure the solution adapts in line with business changes.

On-site service management: Having a dedicated service manager spend time with the Customer Services team on site has built strong relationships between Anglian and VoxGen.

WATER UTILITY IVR CASE STUDY | 07

Graham Blackburn, Contact Centre Manager, Anglian Water

| www.voxgen.com

Identification and screen popping has made a massive difference to our staff.We’ve significantly increased our customer satisfaction rating to one of the best in the industry.Whilst we previously had a touch tone IVR, it was only when we received the VoxGen solution that we fully understood how powerful speech IVRs could be in enhancing the customer experience.

“

”

| www.voxgen.com

RESULTS

The results are impressive on all fronts:

Improved customer satisfaction against regulatory criteria: ‘Very satisfied’ customers increased from 84% to 88%within 3 months. Overall (including ‘Fairly’ and ‘Very’ satisfied), customer satisfaction currently stand at 94%.

25% of all contact is now self-served.

Dynamic piloting: Adapted at launch to deal with any glitches in the system, ensuring customer and business needs were met.

Average Handling Time has been reduced by 20 seconds, freeing up agent time to better serve customers.

The solution is expected to deliver a £2m net benefit within 5 years.

Improved debt recovery.

WATER UTILITY IVR CASE STUDY | 10

| www.voxgen.com

VoxGen’s solution has played a key part in Anglian’s customer service transformation programme. The solution has helped to move Anglian up in the SIM industry table of performance of all Water companies where, currently, they hold the NUMBER 1 position for customer satisfaction.

VoxGen’s self-service solution has delivered significant benefits for customers including:

A simplified customer service experience.

Providing a quick, easy and convenient method of payment.

Saving considerable time by reducing the need to repeat information.

WATER UTILITY IVR CASE STUDY | 11

OF ALL CONTACT IS NOW SELF-

SERVED

25%

94%OVERALL

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Martyn Oakley, Customer Service Director, Anglian Water

| www.voxgen.com

VoxGen is the basis of our multi-channel contact strategy - bringing the customer, the front office and back-office closer together. It will not only improve customer satisfaction but also save costs and increase debt recovery.

“

”

| www.voxgen.com

WATER UTILITY IVR CASE STUDY | 14

ESSENTIAL IVR READINGCHECK OUT OUR BEST PRACTICE ADVICE TO DELIVER SMART, CONNECTED, CONVERSATIONAL IVR

| www.voxgen.com

7 quick, low-cost ways to transform your IVR customer experience from good to great

Quick Win Guerrilla IVR Tactics

The 9 key principles to design, develop and deploy smart, connected conversational IVR applications

Outrageously Great IVR Planning Guide

IVR Customer Experience ChecklistScore your customer experience against 35 essential IVR criteria to pinpoint areas for improvement

Let’s Rid the World of Bad IVR8 imperatives and our 4 differences to make your IVR experiences extraordinary

Cloud IVR Checklist10 reasons to choose VoxGen Cloud Hosting for your IVR

Why bad IVR is undermining your whole customer experience and what to do about it

The Channel CX Forgot

| www.voxgen.com

WATER UTILITY IVR CASE STUDY | 15

EFFECTIVE IVR IN ACTIONLEARN WHY THESE SUCCESSFUL ORGANISATIONS HAVE HAPPIER CUSTOMERS

Callers get faster answers at lower cost, thanks to streamlined IVR

Insurance IVR Case Study

Customer satisfaction figures soar with new self-service IVR application

Retail Pharmacy IVR Case Study

Healthcare IVR Case StudyA more human IVR delivers ROI in just 7 months for healthcare clinics chain

£2M saved over 5 years with new self-service IVR handling 25% of all calls

Water Utility IVR Case Study

We’ll put the IVR through its paces and report back to you on:

SCHEDULE REVIEW NOW

Get Started With a Free IVR Assessment

| www.voxgen.com

Your IVR “persona”: does it accurately reflect your brand?

Your IVR dialog design: does it get callers what they need, fast?

Your on-hold experience: is it helpful, or excruciating?

Cross-channel integrations: can callers complete inquiries in other channels?

Areas that require immediate and longer-term attention