Today, utility companies are facing numerous challenges that are affecting their overall customer experience and customer satisfaction ratings, including weather, regulatory issues and rising energy costs. To mitigate the effects that these can have on a company’s reputation, utilities need to ensure their frontline agents – and leaders – are educated, customer-focused and proactive.

Savvy utilities are employing best practices within their call centers, first by thoughtfully planning how the call center will function. Today, there are two roles needed in the call center. The first is the traditional customer service agents who handle short-term issues such as billing inquiries, statements and service issues. The other emerging role is the “energy or conservation advocates” who take a longer-term, more proactive approach with customers, helping educate them on energy conservation and how it can help the environment and reduce the customer’s bill.

Traditional Customer Service Agents

Today’s frontline agents face a new set of challenges that they didn’t face 10 years ago. While these agents still handle the typical billing and statement questions, the main difference today is that they face callers who are already emotional when they call in. Many callers are concerned at the rising energy prices, and are typically already frustrated, angry or nervous when they picked up the phone because they weren’t able to find the answer through other channels. Many callers aren’t sure how they will pay their bills and are stressed by other aspects of daily life.

The answer lies in empowering the agents through training and coaching, showing them how to defuse highly emotional situations by quickly taking control of the call and by providing competent, on-target answers. Utilities that do this reduce escalated calls, increase customer satisfaction and improve average handle times. While the agent can’t change the fact that regulatory issues may affect prices or unpredictable weather has disrupted service, they can quickly take charge of the call and prove they can provide competent information, deescalating the customer’s emotions and expediently finishing the call.

Energy or Conservation Advocates

Turning some of the call center’s agents into energy advisors is another smart approach that will help reduce the number of unhappy customers. Energy advisors take a proactive approach in educating customers about ways to improve energy savings, promote smartboards if available and leverage sound conservation advice. Rather than reacting, these advisors are trained to be proactive in looking for long-term solutions for the customer issues in a way that benefits them.

The Profile of an Effective Energy or Conservation Advocate

After analyzing the profile of effective energy advocates, Ulysses Learning found that the best ones typically had some sort of consultative sales experience in their background. These weren’t necessarily the most efficient customer service agents, but were the most effective ones. In this role, rather than sell a product, they were selling a service to help the customers manage their energy usage more effectively.

The take-away is that employees bring different skill sets and personality traits to the table and by carefully putting agents in the right roles, utilities can greatly increase the effectiveness of their call centers and energy advisor programs. This translates into more satisfied customers.

Coaching and Leadership Development Are Key to Sustaining Results

At many utility companies, employees come up through the ranks, meaning that they’re experts in the business, but not necessarily skilled on the best ways to improve the customers’ experience or develop teams for the future state. Frontline leadership training is crucial to ensure the customer-focused message starts at the top and works its way down. Then, to ensure agents sustain results in the long-term, they need consistent coaching to reinforce key training messages.

Six steps to creating a winning coaching culture include:

1. Provide timely coaching within a reasonable time after the call.
2. Focus on one specific, pivotal behavior to ensure the greatest impact.
3. Provide constructive and focused feedback.
4. Provide the feedback consistently with dependable follow-up.
5. Provide accountability by having a supervisor– someone whom the agent reports to – conduct the coaching.
6. Provide a mechanism to track the coaching that is occurring to help identify behavior trends, gaps in coaching and performance needs.

Through on-target training, coaching and leadership development, utilities will be equipped to handle the changes taking place in the energy marketplace and seize the day in terms of customer satisfaction.