Severn Trent Water Case Study
Powering Process. Powering Profitability
Severn Trent Water has developed and diversified from a UK water authority into an international environmental services company, supplying water and energy to 8 million people across the Midlands of England and beyond, generating revenues of £1.85 billion and employing over 15,000 people. Managers at Severn Trent Water, however, were concerned by disappointingly low standings in industry-wide customer service league tables. Improving this became a matter of urgency and, as a result, they committed to an innovative technological investment to achieve their fiveyear goal of improved customer service, as part of Project ICE (Improving the Customer Experience).
In the UK, the regulated water utility environment has resulted in significant industry challenges. Consumers have gained power through the industry regulator, Ofwat, and utilities have shifted their focus from a product-centric to a customer-centric approach in order to improve both their service and their standing with the regulator.
Customer care problems at Severn Trent stemmed from contact center inefficiencies and inflexible business processes. Calls with long handling times were generating a large amount of callbacks, incorrect information was given by agents and administrating the call center's technology was complicated. Severn Trent's system requirements are also driven by regulatory requirements: for example, calls must be answered in line with Ofwat's performance criteria.
Achieving Technology Goals
Severn Trent's managers identified a strategy to improve the customer experience by resolving almost all enquiries at the first point of contact, whilst achieving an enhanced and more consistent call quality for its 8 million customers. Sword Ciboodle, with an exemplary record of delivering value to global utilities, was ideally positioned to assist Severn Trent in achieving its technology goals. In partnership with PA Consulting, they created a new customer contact solution for Severn Trent, which has significantly improved customer interaction processes and resulted in an efficient and effective contact center.
Rapid and Easy Access to Data
Initial examination of Severn Trent's original business processes indicated that contact staff urgently required rapid and easy access to data. At that time, it was impossible for agents to determine if a customer had already made contact with the company. Contact center agents were further frustrated by the selection of unintegrated applications on their desktop, which required significant systems knowledge, increased training times and reduced efficiency.
A major benefit of Sword Ciboodle is the ability to create a single customer view: identifying customers instantly and accessing their contact history across different channels. This information is then automatically updated each time a contact is made. Importantly, contact data is then accessed in 'real-time' by agents, and current activities are logged on a 'Bulletin Board' in order to determine quickly if the enquiry is related to an existing action. The Sword Ciboodle framework supports a wide range of reporting functions, allowing users a clear view of the system. The data held also meets legislative requirements by being easily auditable and having controlled access via user profiles.
Increasing flexibility, increasing choice
Severn Trent's operations were significantly constrained by non-integrated IT processes, resulting in a lack of automated workflow.As a result, the ICE solution had to be integrated into an existing IT suite of supporting applications in order to protect prior investments. Sword Ciboodle's solution was to implement a flexible front-end contact-handling application with the ability to handle multiple processes and sources of data. This solution also provided multiple communication channels for customer interaction, thereby increasing flexibility and customer choice.
Sword Ciboodle provides process-centric solutions by mapping business objectives to the underlying applications and data sources. Thanks to the flexible framework of Sword Ciboodle the Proof of Concept was completed within 2 weeks and the development period for Release 1 was only 10 weeks. The ICE system is extremely reliable and is intended to run as a 24/7 operation, with minimal downtime for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. Sword Ciboodle is also extremely scalable and was originally implemented to support a user base of 150 contact center agents, with planned growth to 1,000 agents in the future.
As a strong enabler for change, Sword Ciboodle drives the automation of business processes. Agents now follow a pre-defined set of scripted questions to move through the diagnosis process. Where possible, ICE provides agents with additional information to increase the number of calls resolved on first contact. Calls are now handled at an average arrival rate of 250 calls per hour, with a peak of 400 calls per hour.
An intuitive user interface
The need for a vastly improved desktop environment has been met, and Sword Ciboodle provides an intuitive user interface with a single primary screen for processing all initial customer contacts. Consistent visual styling across all application areas has reduced training and reinforced internal branding.
Further benefits of the system include: Contact Blending, which enables the contact center to handle any form of communication, and Work Blending which controls the type of work an agent performs (for example, if the volumes in the call center are low, the application may push outwardbound calls into the agent's work queue). Agents or teams can also be attributed different profiles in the ICE system, giving them access to work via preassigned skills. Relevant information for the lifecycle of a call (e.g., a successful engineering visit) is pushed to the ICE application, and ICE then supports call 'wrap-up' by updating the supporting business processes through internal communications. Call Recovery allows the agent to resume a call at the exact point where it was prematurely interrupted or ended, thereby saving time and reducing customer frustration.
Highest ever customer service standards
In June 2004, Severn Trent Water recorded their highest ever customer service standards and are continuing their drive for cost reductions and operating efficiencies. Severn Trent Water was recently rated by Ofwat as the top performing water and sewerage company in their latest Overall Performance Assessment.
Using Sword Ciboodle has allowed us to move from handling transactions to handling customers and their needs.