Customer Care Centre

In order to provide international level Customer Services for improving customer satisfaction, every utility should establish a state-of-the-art computerized Integrated Customer Care Centre with a single window operation (Fig.).

Integrated Customer Care Centre

The centre should be equipped with the latest technology and multi-skilled customer service representatives. There should be a one point contact service to relieve the customer from the inconvenience of visiting or contacting different utility offices. Customer Care Centres are often the place where customers go to lodge any complaint, seek clarifications, make payments and to discuss any other concerns related to the services. Customer Care Centres are typically located at various locations to provide geographical convenience to the consumers.

These centres are designed in a very customer friendly manner and take care of the ambience, customer convenience, and have all the necessary personal to address any grievance of the customer.

Infrastructure Requirements

You may like to know: What are the infrastructure requirements for setting up an IT enabled Customer Care Centre? These are given in Box .

Box : Infrastructure Requirements

• Call Switching Equipment – Soft PBX/switch based PBX.

• IVRS (Interactive Voice Response System).

• CTI (Computer Telephony Integration).

• Automatic Call Distributor.

• Dialler.

• Voice Logger.

CALL MONITORING AND RECORDING

• Internet Phone (IP) Telephony.

• Touch screen kiosk for customer query including duplicate bill generation.

• Cash/cheque collection kiosk.

• CTI Remote monitoring capabilities and remote logging facility.

• Customer Relationship Module (CRM).

These can reside on a single server or span across multiple servers.An integrated IT enabled business process automation over the GIS platform is a pre-requisite for providing automated customer care of global standards\ with accountability and responsibility of staff assigned.To provide the best possible customer services, the Customer Care Centre should have an easy to remember and easy to access telephone number with multiple lines operative round the clock on all days of the week. It should be multi-lingual, if required. The Customer Care Centre should use a wide variety of latest technologies, such as

• Computer Telephony Integration (CTI),

• Automatic Call Distributor (ACD),

• Voice Loggers,

• Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVRS), etc.

These are needed to handle the large volume of work that needs to be managed by the centre. These technologies would ensure that the agents are kept as productive as possible, and the calls are queued and processed as quickly as possible to meet the desired service levels. The Customer Care Centre should have real time data update and should act as an interface between the customer and the Utility operations.

Interaction of Customers with the Customer Care Centre

How does the Customer Care Centre Function?
Let us now understand: How does the IT enabled Customer Care Centre work for customer care?When the Customer Service Representative (CSR) at the Customer Care Centre receives a call from the customer, s/he logs the Consumer number into the system. Then the current bill of the consumer pops up on the computer screen before the CSR. The CSR after confirming details regarding the static data (Name, Address, etc,) available on the bill with the consumer, takes the complaint and issues a computer generated token number, which should be a unique identification number.

Upon receipt of the power supply related complaint, the CSR calls the concerned Electrical Maintenance crew over Mobile or through SMS and forwards the details of the consumer, location, complaint type, etc. CSR also records the time of communication for attending the complaint/breakdown.Once the maintenance group has attended and rectified the fault, they call back the CSR, who updates the status of the complaint as closed along with the recording of the actual time of resolution into the system.

CSR also calls back the customer for verifying the same and getting the feedback regarding the service provided by the maintenance personnel. If the consumer does not provide the consumer number, the CSR when making the return call to the consumer also captures the consumer number and updates the database. If a customer wants to know the status of his/her complaint, s/he may dial up the IVRS again and receive the desired information through the recorded voice message anytime from IVRS directly or from the CSR by providing the unique registration number/token number.Apart from this, the IT applications can enable the following features at the Customer Care Centre:

• Escalation of Complaints: The software should have a feature for automatic diversion of message from the Supervisor’s desk to the utility’s pre-specified hierarchy, if the issues are not resolved or complaints are not closed within a predefined service level period. Three or more escalations can be made to expedite the complaint resolution process. The choice of escalation authorities would be made based on the criticality of the situation.

• Billing Complaints: The Customer Care Centre has access to the Billing database for viewing purposes. CSR provides the consumers the bill amount, due date of payment, etc. The CSR also takes up the issues related to the consumer’s billing complaints and passes them on to therelevant Utility authorities for resolution. CSR also passes on the feedback/resolution to the customer after the official resolution is provided by the utility.

• New Connection and Other Activities: Consumer can also approach the single window Customer Care Centre for providing new connection,extension/reduction of load, change/transfer of name, change of category, disconnection/re-connection of power, etc. The issue of application form,its collection, scrutiny and forwarding the same to utility official is the responsibility of the centre. The back-end operations are done by the utility staff. After approval by the Utility official, the Customer Care Centre takes up such jobs.

However, the entire status should be available with the Centre at any point of time from the point consumer submits his/her application until the job is completed. The consumer should get the complete status of his/herapplication at any point of time from the Customer Care Centre itself through Phone or in person.

• Marketing of Services: The CSR should inform the consumers regarding tariff or any new service provided by the utility, e.g., new payment modalities like direct debit facilities, ATP Machines, Bill payment through Credit Card, Cheque Drop boxes, etc.

• Group Messaging System: The software should have features to send group messages to consumers having Mobile phones as per the Customer Care Centre database, such as:

Common message transmission/warning in case of group faults(DT/Feeder failure, etc.) or any other common information on the power situation;

− Advance intimation to consumers regarding load shedding or planned shutdown or preventive maintenance schedule; and

− Date of bills generated and due date of payments, etc.

Generation of Reports

The software should be able to generate the exceptions reports and transmit the same automatically through e-mail to the concerned officials.

The Deliverables

• Customer should get a single touch-point for No supply, billing complaints,Meter related complaints, new connection, change / transfer of name,change of category, fire and shock complaints and all other queries and assistance.

• Customer Care Centre should provide prompt complaint redress thereby enhancing customer satisfaction and building a long relationship.

• It should also provide feedback to the consumer after repair or during repair in case of abnormal delays.

• In addition to the generation of various MIS reports, analysis of complaints  and suggestions for improvement, a Customer Care Centre can also  provide services of Happy calling or Billing reminders, advance intimation to consumers regarding load shedding, planned shutdown or preventive maintenance schedule, Common message transmission/warning in case of group faults or information common for all consumers on the power situation..