Utilities Customers

Australian energy company owned by the Queensland Government.

http://www.energex.com.au/

Australian electricity supplier.

http://www.ergon.com.au/

75% reduction in follow up interactions saving $4.6 million.

http://www.eskom.co.za/

A leading provider of home warranty and energy management solutions.

http://www.nicornational.com/

The biggest electricity retailer in Northern Ireland, supplying over 700,000 homes.

Drove operational costs down by 12%

http://www.pacificorp.com/

A multi-channel Sales & Service solution for UK’s leading Gas and Electricity supplier.

http://www.scottishpower.co.uk/

UK water, supplying water and energy to 8 million people across the UK.

http://www.stwater.co.uk/

Eskom

75% reduction in follow up interactions saving $4.6 million.

http://www.eskom.co.za/

Case Studies

Eskom Case Study

Download the Eskom Case Study: US | UK

The Challenge

Efficiency and customer service within the front and back office of the distribution division were seriously hampered by inconsistencies in the handling and recording of customer service requests. Customer management systems and processes lacked key integration into customer billing and were heavily reliant on proactive management, manual tracking and follow up. There was insufficient information feedback from the value chains, resulting in multiple customer call backs and no unified case desktop. Therefore, in order to meet increasing demand in a highly regulated marketplace, Eskom had to examine their business processes. The utility needed a system that would allow agents to access information more effectively, therefore increasing productivity, enhancing customer service and reducing the overall cost to serve customers.

Eskom Website

The Solution

Sword Ciboodle provided Eskom with an enterprise-wide CRM solution, driven by Sword Ciboodle’s business process platform. The solution controlled routing and monitoring of work over Eskom’s vast operational arena and shared workloads across their 7 regional contact centres. The scalability and integration capabilities of Sword Ciboodle was key, providing agents with a single customer view across the enterprise. The platform also provided campaign management, segmentation and customer profiling.

The Results

This award winning project reduced the time to service customers, improved customer experience and realised savings of over £12 million in the last 5 years; securing Eskom’s place as one of the world’s largest utility companies.

Customer service agents now follow standardised business processes within the system and tasks are executed according to priority. This has improved customer satisfaction, the quality of interactions, reduced time to service customers and dramatically enhanced the overall customer experience.The integration of 8 critical systems has allowed Eskom to leverage existing investment, whilst providing agents with an intuitive single desktop, which has contributed to reducing training time by 50%. Information is simplified by a central repository and an electronic contact trail of every customer request is created. Consolidation and integration of business systems has removed the need for multiple call backs and increased first contact resolution to 90%.

We have focused entirely on our people and processes and with Sword Ciboodle, we have been able to strip out waste and improve the customer experience

Gabriel Kgabo, Divisional Customer Services Manager, Eskom

Benefits

$24 million saved by reduction in time to service customers
80% fall in average case duration, reduced from 30 days to just 6 Trebled first contact resolution to 90%
75% reduction in follow up interactions saving $4.6 million Gold winner for excellence in BPM and Workflow - Global BPM Awards

Solution Highlights

Users: 900
Channels: Contact center, SMS, fax, email, web and whitemail
Process: Include complaint management, balance enquiry, statement requests and service requests
Integration: core utility billing system (CC&B), Seebeyond, Avaya

Press Releases

Eskom wins Gold BPM Award for work with Graham Technology

Tuesday, 26 February 2008

Eskom wins Gold BPM Award for work with Graham Technology

One of the world's largest energy companies realizes $26 million in savings from process-driven customer care platform

Graham Technology, a provider of customer-oriented business software and services, today announced that its customer, South African energy giant, Eskom, has won the Gold Award for the Middle East and Africa region at the International BPM Awards and Technology Showcase in Nashville , Tennessee . Eskom , South Africa 's state-owned electricity company is the seventh largest utility in the world in terms of generation capacity, and ninth in terms of sales.

The winning project, codenamed UBUSO (the Zulu word for "face") created a Customer Service and Relationship Management solution underpinned by Graham Technology's business process platform, which provided the means to control routing and monitoring of work over Eskom's vast operational arena and sharing workloads across their seven regional call centres. The platform was also essential in providing campaign management, segmentation and customer profiling capabilities.

"It is an honour to receive an award of this nature at such a well-respected industry event," said Gabriel Kgabo, Divisional Customer Service Manager, Eskom. "We have focused entirely on our people and processes over the last few years and with Graham Technology's software platform, we have been able to strip out waste and dramatically improve the customer experience."

Eskom, with revenues of over US $5 billion, serves more than 3.7million customers throughout South Africa . The vertically integrated utility generates 95% of the electricity used in South Africa and generates over 50% of the total electricity produced in Africa , making Eskom by far the continent's largest utility company.

The project produced strong results for Eskom:

Reduced costs: Intuitive system led to lower training costs; Single user interface reduced the cost of people skills as only a single skill set was required; Reduced cost per customer interaction
Time savings: Reduction in average call handling time; Reduction in dispatched items; Reduction in repeat calls
Productivity improvements: Increased ability to respond to business change; Increased efficiency through customer self-service; Case handling cuts out inefficiencies; Integration with back end systems provides real time access to information

Taking into account all of the above improvements, Eskom calculates that it will realize accumulated cost savings of more than US $26 million over a five year period.

"Eskom are true visionaries in the application of process-improvement techniques across their operations. Their ambition was instrumental in our product development agenda as they pushed for more and more cost savings and improved customer experience scores," said David Williams, CTO, Graham Technology. "Our technology takes BPM to the very front line of customer service and support, making it a great fit for Eskom and our many other global clients."

Now in their 14th year, the Awards were presented on Monday, February 25th, 2008 in conjunction with the BPM Awards and Technology Showcase (http://www.bpmfocus.org/events) held from February 25-26 at the Sheraton Nashville Downtown, in Tennessee . The awards are jointly sponsored by BPM Focus and Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) with support from industry associations Object Management Group (OMG) and media organization, BPM.com.

The BPM Awards and Technology Showcase is a 3-day forum designed by a team of leading independent consultants and industry analysts in the field of BPM. This program was designed for organizations to minimize risk and accelerate decision-making around BPM. Based around an assessment framework and onsite introductions to the leading BPM vendors, it provides an opportunity to fast track your BPM projects and technology assessments.

About Graham Technology

Graham Technology specialises in contact center software and services. Since 1986, Graham Technology has worked with blue-chip organisations striving for operational excellence and who, in partnership with Graham Technology, have realised exceptional return on investment.

Headquartered in the UK , Graham Technology has seven global offices, supporting a worldwide customer base. With its flagship customer interaction software, ciboodle, the company has become recognised as one of the most visionary CRM solution providers in the world.

www.grahamtechnology.com

Media and analysts contact:

Danny Sullivan
inmedia Public Relations Inc.
Tel (UK): +44 (0) 141 404 6478
Tel (US): +1 613 686 5657
Email: dsullivan@inmedia.com