Improving Utility Call Centers

Transcription

1 CONFERENCE Improving Utility Call Centers Realigning Services with Customer Expectations Hyatt Regency Atlanta on Peachtree Street Featuring Georgia Power Call Center Tour Friday, December 6, 2013 Sponsor is authorized by IACET to offer 1.0 CEUs for the conference. 1

2 Overview In today s fast moving world, the traditional utility call center no longer fits and must adapt to accommodate their customers. More and more customers prefer to interact with utilities via web self-service, social media and mobile to get quick answers to questions. Many customers (especially the Millennials) do not want to pick up the phone and talk to an agent. Energy utilities need to be prepared to service this next generation of customers effectively to achieve high customer satisfaction rates. Live agents are still critically important for customer service, but they need to keep pace with the constant change in technology and consumer preferences. Catering to customer service preferences in the future will require process and technology changes. The contact center is where customers go to find answers that they were unable to get online. Utilities need to think of self-service as the primary channel, period. It s not an alternative to agents. Instead, in all cases, agents are an escalation channel. Second, utilities need to ensconce the thinking in the organization by organizing! They need to separate self-service management from agent channel management in order to elicit the right internal behaviors related to mindset, priorities, investment, etc. Having a plan that uses the right people with current technology will ensure that your contact center continually improves. Join us at this conference and hear about some of the more innovative call center strategies being implemented by utilities. Learn how to improve your customer satisfaction scores and how to prepare your call center of the future. Who Should Attend Utility staff to include: Vice presidents, general managers, managers, directors and supervisors of customer service Contact center management professionals Market research strategists & analysts Business planning, information systems, gas and electric field operations staff Training and development staff Quality assurance staff Usability professionals Contact center management professionals Corporate communication professionals Strategic planning and performance management professionals Learning Outcomes Discuss the channel preferences for today s utility customer Discuss best practices in interactive voice response units (IVR) Critique what is involved with call center metrics at various utilities Explain new ways to achieve IVR design objectives Discuss how utilities are adapting and changing to accommodate the growing trend of self-service and digital Evaluate how call center agents want to feel valued Discuss how utility call centers are evolving to accommodate future customers Examine the multifaceted contact center transition process 2

3 Agenda Thursday, December 5, :00 8:30 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast 8:30 8:35 a.m. Opening Remarks 8:35 8:45 a.m. welcome Address AGL Resources has safely served customers with safe, efficient, reliable natural gas for more than 150 years. Today, we continue to build upon our reputation as a leader in the natural gas industry. The largest component of our business is the distribution operations, which features seven natural gas utilities that safely deliver clean, efficient natural gas to nearly 4.5 million customers. Connie McIntyre will provide a high level overview on how AGL Resources has achieved success with their customers and in the community through strategic planning and delivery. - Connie McIntyre, VP of Customer Service, AGL Resources 8:45 9:30 a.m. show em The Love: Create a Service Approach That Gives Customers What They really Want It is nice to confirm what we are doing right and I am leaving with some new ideas as well! Thank you! CCC Operations Supervisor, SDG&E Learn how to transition your center from the outdated transactions service model to the highly effective customer-centric service model. If your contact center is dedicated to fast, efficient transaction handling, it s time to re-think the way you measure the performance of your customer care organization. Customer surveys reveal a gradual shift in what customers say they need to be highly satisfied when they talk with an agent. Today s more sophisticated customers won t settle for simply having their transaction handled efficiently, they want more than that. Customers want to feel valued, to be treated as an individual -- not a faceless account number. In short, when your customers call you they want to feel the love. Contact centers are responding to this change in customer expectations by realigning their service delivery approach. Making the shift from the traditional transactions model to a customer-centric model is not an easy proposition. Long-term success depends on several key factors. This session provides a rare inside look at the multifaceted contact center transition process used by a top expert. - Barbara Burke, Author & Principal, Barbara Burke & Associates, Inc. 9:30 10:15 a.m. IVR: New Initiatives High call volume and handle times even with more self-service channels The importance of IVR for cost-effective ways to manage simple customer-facing transactions Utility IVR containment rates and the large behind other large customer-facing industries Effective IVR design and usability testing Determining which services or features to offer Gathering customer feedback Cloud-based IVR Speech recognition 10:15 10:30 a.m. Morning Break - Gary Avin, Manager Customer Care Center, Lee County Electric Cooperative 3

4 Agenda Thursday, December 5, 2013 (CONTINUED) 10:30 a.m. 12:00 p.m. Session I: Organization Change Management Organizational change management (OCM) is a framework for managing the effect of new business processes, changes in organizational structure, or cultural changes within an enterprise. OCM addresses the people side of change management. In this session learn how utilities are changing from the current state of their contact center to the desired state. provides conferences with very relevant information and exceptional speakers. Division Manager: CIS, IREA Enjoyed the more intimate venue of this conference. Great to understand the challenges that other utility companies are facing, and best practices for facing them! Supervisor, LVVWD 12:00 1:00 p.m. Group Luncheon Utility Contact Center Transformation - Chad Andree, Manager of Workforce, Performance, & Channel MGT, CenterPoint Energy plan it and Prove It: Building a Robust Planning and Performance Based Call Center Culture - Dennis Wright, Manager Support Services Contact Center Operations, Duke Energy - Dan Rickwalder, Principal Consultant, Duke Energy 1:00 3:00 p.m. session I: Organization Change Management (continued) 3:00 3:30 p.m. networking Break managing Evolution Effectively Bringing About Change in the Contact Center and Beyond - Darius Lepp, Manager Residential Services, Louisville Gas & Electric performance Improvement and Support in the Call Center - Greg Dunavant, Senior Manager Customer Care at Gas South - Sheila Gatlin, Vice President, Organizational Change Management & Training, Five Point 3:30 4:15 p.m. Customer Calibrated Monitoring A Fresh Approach to Improving Call Center Customer Experience Call center managers are tasked with an ongoing need to provide feedback and coaching to customer facing call representatives, derive strategic direction that helps diagnose and prioritize improvement opportunities, and to understand potentially different improvement needs across various call centers, teams and geographies. Market Strategies International has developed a new process improvement technique that offers a fresh approach to address a fundamental question How Can We Best Monitor Call Center Performance? The Customer Calibrated Monitoring process addresses the evolving needs of today s call center. The process blends the strengths of traditional Quality Assurance and survey approaches, and offers feedback that is more specific and actionable at a cost that is much less than traditional phone-based call center research. Randall Hula, Vice President in Market Strategies International s Energy Division and George Wilkerson, President of Market Strategies International, will offer insights on how this process has been leveraged with a client in the Healthcare industry and how it can be leveraged by utility call center managers. - Randall Hula, VP, Market Strategies International - George Wilkerson, President, Market Strategies International REGISTER 4601 TODAY! DTC Blvd., CALL Suite OR VISIT 4

5 Agenda Thursday, December 5, 2013 (CONTINUED) 4:15 5:00 p.m. Contact Center Roundtable Discussion In this roundtable discussion, you will have the opportunity to talk with your peers about successes and challenges within your departments. This session also gives you the opportunity to brainstorm new ideas to develop new customer initiatives at your utility. Topics for discussion will be selected by the moderator and attendees. Bring your challenges and thinking caps to the table! Moderator: Barbara Burke, Author & Principal, Barbara Burke & Associates, Inc. Panelists: - Dennis Wright, Support Services Contact Center Operations, Duke Energy - Adam Burnoski, Manager of Resource Management, Xcel Energy - Gary Avin, Manager Customer Care Center, Lee County Electric Cooperative - Chad Andree, Manager of Workforce, Performance, & Channel MGT, CenterPoint Energy Friday, December 6, :00 8:30 a.m. Continental Breakfast 8:30 9:15 a.m. Coaching to Reduce Attrition Coaching is so much more than just telling someone what they re doing wrong and how to do it right! Coaching should motivate, encourage, teach, help, guide and direct individuals to self-discover paths to improvement and sustain good performance. Studies show agents want to feel valued and part of the solution in their development, and this contributes to reduced attrition. This session will show how to move away from Cookie Cutter Coaching and train leaders to engage and retain individuals through sound methodical techniques. The takeaways will enable you to better Coach the Coaches back in your organizations. - G. Todd Gladden, CWPP, VP - US Operations, Planmen Consultancy, LLC 9:15 10:00 a.m. The Customer of the Future: How Utilities Can Prepare Today Customer service is evolving. Traditional call centers continue to handle the lion s share of customer service inquiries, but increasingly customers are reaching out via the Web and through mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. Social servicing is also beginning to expand throughout the business world, and utilities are no exception. Using J.D. Power s exclusive customer research, this presentation will assess how customers are served today, trends around customer-preferred channels, and how traditional and emerging channels impact customer satisfaction. - Dennis Smith, Director Energy Practice, J.D. Power & Associates. 10:00 10:15 a.m. Morning Break 10:15 10:45 a.m. Load Bus and Head to Georgia Power Call Center Tour 5

6 Agenda Friday, December 6, 2013 (continued) 10:45 12:00 p.m. Tour Georgia Power Contact Center Join us for a tour of the Georgia Power contact center! Georgia Power s Customer Care Center (CCC) is home to 500+ employees who serve our 2.4 million customers throughout Georgia. Approximately 330 of those employees serve as Residential Customer Service Representatives (Consultants) for both English and Spanish customers. An additional 28 Sales Consultants assist Commercial customers, and an additional 200+ employees handle a wide variety of customer transactions via the web, specialized energy expertise, and back office support. Georgia Power s CCC received 10.5 million calls in Of those calls, 5.7 million were handled by Consultants with a 27 second average speed of answer and 4.6 million (44%) of the calls were completed through the Voice Response Unit. In addition to inbound calls, Georgia Power continues to seek and offer other channels of communications for customers, such as Online Customer Care which includes assistance via and chat. 12:00 p.m. return to Hotel and Conference Adjourns 6

7 Instructional Methods Case Studies, PowerPoint presentations, and panel discussions will be used in this conference. Requirements for Successful Completion of Program Participants must sign in/out each day and be in attendance for the entirety of the conference to be eligible for continuing education credit. iacet Credits EVENT LOCATION has been approved as an Authorized Provider by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET), 1760 Old Meadow Road, Suite 500, McLean, VA In obtaining this approval, has demonstrated that it complies with the ANSI/IACET Standards, which are widely recognized as standards of good practice internationally. As a result of its Authorized Provider membership status, is authorized to offer IACET CEUs for its programs that qualify under the ANSI/IACET Standards. is authorized by IACET to offer 1.0 CEUs for the conference. A room block has been reserved at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta on Peachtree Street. 265 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta, GA 30303, for the nights of December 4-5, Room rates are $139, plus applicable tax. Call (404) for reservations and mention the program to get the group rate. The cutoff date to receive the group rate is November 22, 2013, but as there are a limited number of rooms available at this rate, the room block may close sooner. Please make your reservations early. PROCeEDINGS A copy of the conference proceedings will be distributed to attendees at the event. If you are unable to attend or would like to purchase additional copies, flash drives are available two weeks after the conference is complete. The cost per flash drive is US $295 (add US $50 for international shipments). Flash drives include visual presentations only. Upon receipt of order and payment, the flash drive will be shipped to you via regular USPS mail. NOTE: All presentation flash drive sales are final and are nonrefundable. sponsorship opportunities Do you want to drive new business through this event s powerful audience? Becoming a sponsor or exhibitor is an excellent opportunity to raise your profile before a manageably sized group of executives who make the key purchasing decisions for their businesses. There is a wide range of sponsorship opportunities available that can be customized to fit your budget and marketing objectives, including: Platinum, gold, or VIP sponsor Workshop sponsor Reception host Lanyard sponsor Networking break host Luncheon host Tabletop exhibit Breakfast host Custom sponsorship opportunities are also available. Please contact Grant Neptune at or gneptune@euci.com for more information. REGISTER 4601 TODAY! DTC Blvd., CALL Suite OR VISIT 7

8 REGISTRATION INFORMATIon Mail Directly To: Electric Utility Consultants, Inc. () 4601 DTC Blvd., Ste. 800 please register the following EVENT LOCATION A room block has been reserved at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta on Peachtree Street. 265 Peachtree St. NE, 30303, for the nights of December 4-5, Room rates are $139, plus applicable tax. Call (404) for reservations and mention the program to get the group rate. The cutoff date to receive the group rate is November 22, 2013, but as there are a limited number of rooms available at this rate, the room block may close sooner. Please make your reservations early. Improving Utility Call Centers : US $1395 Early bird on or before november 22, 2013: US $1195 ENERG ZE WEEKLY s Energize Weekly newsletter compiles and reports on the latest news and trends in the energy industry. Newsletter recipients also receive a different, complimentary conference presentation every week on a relevant industry topic. The presentations are selected from a massive library of more than 1,000 current presentations that has gathered during its 26 years organizing conferences. Sign me up for Energize Weekly. How did you hear about this event? (direct , colleague, speaker(s), etc.) Print Name Job Title Company What name do you prefer on your name badge? Address City State/Province Zip/Postal Code Country Telephone List any dietary or accessibility needs here CREDIT CARD Name on Card Account Number Billing Address Billing City Billing State Billing Zip Code/Postal Code Exp. Date Security Code (last 3 digits on the back of Visa and MC or 4 digits on front of AmEx) OR Enclosed is a check for $ to cover registrations. All cancellations received on or before November 1, 2013, will be subject to a US $195 processing fee. Written cancellations received after this date will create a credit of the tuition (less processing fee) good toward any other event or publication. This credit will be good for six months. In case of event cancellation, s liability is limited to refund of the event registration fee only. For more information regarding administrative policies, such as complaints and refunds, please contact our offices at reserves the right to alter this program without prior notice. 8