Companies are churning through year two of the pandemic, on top of managing workforces, grappling with brain drain, and facing hiring and retention challenges with newer employees. At the same time, customers used to Amazon and Target are demanding even higher levels of convenience and quality in service.
If ever utilities needed to elevate the employee experience as a tool for delivering highly rated customer service, this is the time.
Innovative utilities are strategizing, planning and analyzing their way to best-in-class initiatives that infuse workdays with purpose, engagement and goals, all with a view toward retaining their biggest assets—employees—while improving service to customers.
“You could have a great customer experience but a bad employee experience, and that’s still not a good experience,” said Tim McGrath, director of Eversource customer contact centers. “I want to make our workplace a great place to work.”
Like utilities nationwide, Eversource is “not immune” to the Great Resignation, but agility and reevaluation in everything from hiring to employee evaluations are paying dividends in a better employee experience, said McGrath.
Eversource deploys a multifaceted approach. A continuous cycle of reviews and upgrades leads to elevated job satisfaction while also encouraging team members to strive for excellence.
Behavior-based quality assurance: Until early 2020, Eversource quality assurance analysts used a 100-point scale to determine customer service representative performance. But reviews often turned into debates over why QA analysts chose their rankings, rather than discussing the CSR’s job performance, “which is not the point of what we’re trying to do,” said McGrath. “We want to focus on behavior and the customer experience.”
To jump-start an overhaul, McGrath and his manager of workforce planning, quality assurance and performance analytics discussed changes that would win CSR support. Their elegant solution trimmed 100 points to five and focused on key metrics of meeting customer expectations.
They shared the results, solicited views and explained the behavior-based approach in focus groups with 100 employees. With that solid grounding, those 100 CSRs turned into champions for change. “They bought into it, and they would tell their peers,” said McGrath. “Now they see that it’s really about how they treat each customer.”
Goals orientation: The compact, behavior-based approach translated nicely into customized dashboards accessible to each CSR. McGrath’s team uses Power BI to crunch disparate data from telephony and reporting systems into performance evaluations. The results are displayed on the five-point scale through a gas tank-style graphic created by an Eversource designer and data analyst. At a glance, CSRs can see how they’re doing.
“The CSRs know the goals they have to hit in order to be successful contributors or top achievers, and they get it every single month, so they know exactly where they stand when they go for their midyear review,” said McGrath. “And, by the way, it saves the supervisor about a month of work.”
As for those goals, McGrath tried stat ranking, establishing areas for all to focus on, but his CSRs “really wanted goals.” “Our targets are challenging,” he said. “They’re designed to drive performance improvement and customer satisfaction.”
The impact of such human-centered policies on employee engagement became evident in the 2021 biennial employee survey. Participation was higher than ever, with one contact center improving 100% over the 2019 survey.
Taking control: Scrutiny of traditional performance-evaluation metrics revealed a thread of standards over which CSRs have no control, including service level and resolution of problems that fall into other departments.
Even measuring talk time put CSRs in the awkward position of cutting off callers, which was “not the experience we want our customers to have,” McGrath said. “I would much rather see our CSRs spend 20 minutes to answer every single question, and the customers satisfied so they don’t have to call back again.”
That discovery prompted intentional decisions to measure the things that CSRs can control, including after-call work, empathy, adherence to schedules, and mastery of policies and procedures. The emphasis on those manageable behavior-based and technical skills could perhaps explain why Eversource customer experience ratings measured by the three-question Stella Connect survey have consistently averaged 4.9 out of five stars for the last two years.
Stella Connect provides 15,000 to 20,000 fresh post-transaction surveys a month, and CSRs can see the real-time results on their dashboards. For QA purposes, the tool “separates the experience with the CSR from overall customer experience with Eversource,” noted McGrath. “Maybe they don’t like a company policy or procedure, but they think the CSR is fabulous.”
Teamwork across the miles: Looking back on March 2020 shelter-in-place requirements, McGrath is proud that he and his team successfully converted hundreds of contact center employees to remote work in eight days.
Retaining a sense of teamwork in a scattered workforce relies on a bottom-up approach and the behavior-based cultural change that was already underway. Even via videoconferencing, supervisors engage CSRs in a holistic sense, checking on their well-being as well as their work progress, sustaining what is “by far the most critical relationship we have,” said McGrath.
Progress toward monthly stretch goals, such as shaving seconds off average after-call work time, is still tracked and rewarded. In the days of fully staffed contact centers, employees who achieved their goals could play “Putting for Prizes,” putting a golf ball for chances to win such rewards as gift cards, extra breaks or another hour of vacation.
Rather than allow remote work to kill a popular morale booster, McGrath’s team refashioned “Putting for Prizes” into “Spinning for Prizes,” where supervisors go on camera and spin prize wheels for those treasured rewards.
McGrath also gets on camera to maintain his quarterly management meetings and to introduce himself and Eversource to each class of new hires. Speaking in casual, self-deprecating terms (“I’m always the second person to say when I’m wrong,” he says. “My wife is the first.”) sets a tone for all to follow. “It’s my experience that customers prefer a more informal, collegial conversation versus the buttoned-up, scripted CSR bot,” he said.
McGrath has not noticed any generational differences in how CSRs perceive changes in workplace culture, review procedures or other employee-experience practices. While the use of data has seeped into all corners of life, the keys to buy-in remain simplifying the findings and sharing the reasoning behind every decision.
“We always work to explain why we set the targets as they are to help individuals understand the impact their job performance has on the customer and the company,” McGrath said.
Utilities don’t have “ratepayers” anymore. They have customers—the same customers who expect streamlined service in equal helpings from all providers, whether that’s Amazon or their local utilities, said Doris Yon, director of customer analytics, strategy & solutions, Southern Company Gas.
Understanding customer concerns and taking action to mitigate them is key in customer engagement. In a process that has taken almost 10 years, Southern Company Gas has built the capabilities to leverage voice of the customer, or VOC, data for strategic improvement and decision making.
Original baselines created from such tools as the J.D. Power syndicated studies and post-transaction surveys have been transformed into multifaceted benchmarking initiatives. The effort spread the net, collecting VOC data across multiple channels, enterprisewide and from individual utilities. In addition to VOC surveys, channels include customer complaints at the regulatory and executive levels, website interactions such as Google reviews, quality monitoring, Better Business Bureau inputs, news media, social media and interactions with frontline employees.
“We try to be as comprehensive as possible in incorporating all the channels where our customers express sentiments about our company,” Yon said. “By nature, some of these are going to be negative, whereas other channels will highlight both our strong points and areas of opportunity. Ultimately, they all offer insight toward our goal of continuous improvement.”
As Southern Company Gas embraced data-informed decision making, an enterprise culture shift was underway to gain buy-in of the VOC program. Internal stakeholders learned to accept input from forces seemingly outside the utility’s control—not from operational metrics but from opinions formed and expressed by customers. “You did a satisfactory job, or you didn’t,” Yon said. “Customers are saying there are things we are not doing a good job on, so how are we closing that loop?”
In time, buy-in emerged through a new understanding—that “closing the loop” empowers employees to make improvements and change VOC from negative to positive.
But turning VOC data into actionable insights for internal stakeholders requires delivery in “digestible chunks” that reveal opportunities for improvement. Findings typically fall into three categories—process, people or technology—that can stand separately or work in combination. Each suggests areas of action, such as guidance for improving a process, restructuring training or upgrading technology.
From there, an element of storytelling helps bolster a culture now equipped to adopt and embrace VOC findings. Testimonials and direct quotes are shared to illustrate customer satisfaction findings with real-life customer experiences. “Our customers are going to tell us exactly where those failing parts are,” Yon said. “They’re not shy.”
Thanks to employee buy-in, staff aren’t shy either about asking for the input. “I love it when someone says, ‘I haven’t received my set of pain points yet. Where are some things I need to work on?’” Yon said. “People want to make sure they are doing a good job.”
With its VOC program achieving maturity, Southern Company Gas executives and the board of directors also adopted results from its Transaction Survey, conducted after interactions with CSRs or field service representatives, as a companywide incentive pay goal in 2019.
The following year, results from the J.D. Power Gas Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study were incorporated into Southern Company Gas’ goals. Since not all 4.3 million customers across Southern Company Gas’ footprint interact with frontline employees, integrating perceptions of upholding company values such as safety first and total commitment into the satisfaction model also are critical for success. “We have met our target every year since shifting to a VOC metric,” said Yon. “We also set our targets to ensure continuous year-over-year improvement.”
Like McGrath at Eversource, Yon completes the snapshot of performance by pairing VOC findings with operational data. In Southern Company Gas’ cross-functional approach, representatives from customer-facing departments and their support units analyze VOC data to address challenges jointly or separately. The comprehensive picture gives the entire enterprise a transparent look at where the utility is delivering on promises or striving for improvement.
For CSRs taking the brunt of complaints, a holistic approach like this provides context and the knowledge that the problems heaped on their plates are being addressed. Such transparency also contributes to a sense of control and job satisfaction. That sense of purpose is essential for a positive employee experience, Yon said. She sees it in frontline employees who often already have solutions to the challenges revealed by survey results and customer input. “They’ll say, ‘Here’s this workaround I’ve been doing with the process,’” Yon said. “Why should that be the workaround? Why shouldn’t that be the process itself?”
Meanwhile, inclusivity in problem-solving contributes to attracting and retaining talent in a competitive job climate, Yon believes. Southern Company Gas promotes inclusion by bringing frontline employees into customer journey mapping and micro battles, such as the recent project that extracted CSR input on possible solutions to shaving time off new meter sets. Such efforts show that enhancing employee experience is about “more than just the paycheck.”
“You hear that passion in their voice,” Yon said. “There’s a wealth of information they can share. Our employees want to feel valued, not just for doing the right thing, but for contributing to the solution.”
The 21st-century customer is a highly evolved—and evolving—entity. Utilities that keep pace by investing time and resources into the employee experience can remain relevant and responsive to the needs of their customers, stakeholders and communities.
But ultimately, utilities must reach the place where they shape the company’s strategic vision through data evaluation while also assessing whether that vision was and is the correct one.
“As technology and customer expectations continuously evolve, we need to make sure we’re keeping up with that evolution, and the only way we’re going to know we’re doing that is through data,” Yon said. “From an analytical point of view, this is a really cool time to be in the industry. Things are constantly changing, but we need to make sure: Did things change the way we intended them to change, and was this future state really the ideal we wanted for our customers?”
Join us at CS Week, May 2-6, in Phoenix
Customer service is changing as fast as you can say, “How may I help you?” Keeping pace demands the skills to navigate a sea of trends and challenges.
CS Week is a unique conference experience, investigating the nuances of customer service through the lens of the utility sector. Dynamic workshop sessions; specialty venues such as the Executive Summit, Key Account Forum and ENGAGE311; and the largest exhibit hall in the industry span the utility customer-experience life cycle: analytics, billing and payments, contact center, credit and collections, digital customer engagement, field services, and strategies and management.
For peer-to-peer exploration of the latest in utility customer service, join CS Week, set for May 2–6 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona. For more information, visit www.csweek.org or call 903/893-3214.