Turning Obstacles to Opportunities: Revolutionizing UK Utility Customer Care

In this blog, originally published on the Water Industry Journal website, Richard Gregory at Odigo explains how we can deliver quick customer service wins to keep everyone happy.

Recent media scrutiny of sewage leaks and Ofwat penalties, coupled with a drop in customer satisfaction (UKCSI), means balancing customer relationships and infrastructure challenges is more complex than ever.

On top of this, water companies are expected to embrace a green, forward-thinking mindset, promoting the use of smart meters and encouraging conscious consumption to meet per capita water consumption targets – all while contending with the legacy systems inherited from public sector times.

Contact centres are in the perfect position, as the junction between businesses and customers, to evolve beyond simply handling billing queries or complaints.

They have the potential to play a vital role in building trust, driving customer engagement, and helping customers navigate complex issues like infrastructure upgrades, green initiatives, and even financial hardship.

By optimising contact centre strategies to use resources more efficiently, it’s possible to do much more than react to customer needs – such as offering education, guidance and more comprehensive support for vulnerable customers.

During my 15 years in the contact centre industry, I’ve seen time and time again how small, strategic changes can make a big difference. The right processes free up valuable time for agents to connect with customers in meaningful ways.

In the water industry, where the stakes are high, these changes can ensure that contact centres become the linchpin of improved customer service and operational success. This has additional tangible benefits, C-MeX is Ofwat’s financial and reputational incentive mechanism for excellent service levels.

Reenergising Through Quick Wins

In an industry facing such critical challenges, strategic service improvements can deliver meaningful quick wins – but success relies on knowledge.

Why Are Customers Really Making Contact?

This changes over time and is key to understanding the pressures on a contact centre and ensuring services align with real customer demands.

This knowledge also helps identify the high-volume simple queries which are ideal candidates for self-service. It may or may not be surprising to learn that many customers don’t actually want to use the phone.

According to ContactBabel, while 74% of inbound traffic in utility contact centres still comes through the phone, only a fraction of customers – 40% for complex queries, 36% for urgent issues, and just 22% for emotional concerns – actually prefer it.

This means optimising calls and offering the right alternative channels can vastly improve, and it’s an area where artificial intelligence (AI) can play a key role.

With access to the right data, AI can revolutionise customer service. It’s true that proper integration and deployment isn’t quick, but the potential for rapid change is immense once AI is in place.

Businesses can use AI not only to streamline interactions but also offer the digital channels many customers prefer to use.

AI: The Future of Efficient Service

AI can handle many aspects of contact centre working processes, from automation for repetitive tasks like data entry to summarising calls and emails, improving response times. AI can also make suggestions to agents during a call to help personalise service.

When it comes to calls in particular, a truly impactful application of AI is its integration into qualification and routing. By identifying indicators of vulnerability and conducting sentiment analysis, AI can accelerate care for priority issues.

It also allows customers to express the reason for their call in their own words, enabling companies to rapidly catalogue the real drivers of customer contact and identify the language and terminology that customers use to optimise menu options and self-help features.

This wealth of information can transform service delivery. AI-powered insights can reshape IVR menus to better reflect customer needs, improving the user experience by prioritising commonly used services.

Routing rules and agent training can be adapted, and with integrated ID&V, customers arrive at an agent with the history and accurate context needed to speed first call resolution and personalise each interaction.

Every Customer Counts

At Odigo I’ve seen AI isn’t about dehumanising interactions – it’s about improving them. By responding more effectively, and fine-tuning engagement strategies, AI ensures that stretched contact centre resources are intelligently used to provide every customer the attention they need.

However, without a strategy that connects all customer interactions – whether through phone, web, email, or in-person – into one cohesive history, organisations risk missing a vital link.

It is this unified data that provides both agents and AI with the high-quality information they need to deliver consistent, personalised experiences every time, while also supporting accessibility.

Water and waste services are universal, meaning water companies serve a diverse range of customers – from the tech-savvy to the digitally excluded. Offering a seamless experience across all channels and ensuring communication is clear and accessible to everyone is key to building trust.

Once in place, technology can offer quick wins, but it isn’t a shortcut. Invest time and work strategically, and you’ll have the foundation for a resilient, customer-centric service that meets the evolving challenges of today’s water industry.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Odigo – View the Original Article

For more information about Odigo - visit the Odigo Website

Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.

Author: Odigo
Reviewed by: Rachael Trickey