Case Study: EDF Empowers Its Energy Customers

Overview

EDF in the UK is Britain’s biggest generator of zero-carbon electricity and a provider of natural gas and electricity to homes and businesses in the UK.

A subsidiary of EDF (Électricité de France), EDF in the UK stands out for its sustainability initiatives and goal, to help Britain achieve Net Zero.

EDF is dedicated to ongoing customer service improvements and empowering customers to make informed decisions about their energy usage.

It continues to adapt and refine service in the face of high levels of industry turbulence which have undermined consumer trust in the utility sector as a whole. Finding ways to provide clear personalised communications and consistent messaging at scale is crucial.

Key Metrics

• 3.5 million domestic customers
• 34,000 calls a day of typical contact volumes
• 3000 agents working in a hybrid environment

The Challenge

The needs of EDF’s customers are met by three in-house contact centres with support from partners across 3 locations worldwide.

These include specialised teams who need visibility on customer history and information coming from in-home SMART meters.

Additionally, with about half of EDF’s customers smart-enabled (c. 2 million) and keen to take control of their energy consumption, an omnichannel strategy is a necessity.

For EDF this makes high-volume capacity, channel choice and third-party solution integration crucial to ensure agents have the processes, visibility and tools they need to keep supporting customers in a timely and accurate way.

The Solution

Odigo’s scalable and open cloud-based solution has supported EDF in the face of several challenges. During COVID lockdowns the Odigo solution offered contact centre interaction management for agents working remotely and continues to support hybrid working patterns.

Service at scale has at times posed an unprecedented challenge, including during EDF’s effective response to the ultra-high peak demand situations around National Meter Reading Days.

Planning ahead and increasing capacity helped support 2-2.5 million affected customers and an upsurge in contact volume from 34,000 to 200,000 in a single day.

The way in which EDF has leveraged the Odigo solution has also adapted over time, both with a change in CRM solution provider and the deployment of third-party NLP. Odigo has worked closely with EDF to meet its changing needs and collaborate with other providers.

The Benefits

Reduced Number of Internal Transfers

Speech analytics during qualification coordinates with EDF’s specialised NLP software to better identify caller intent and match them with the right agent, first time.

Priority Customer Treatment

Customers on the Priority Service Register and vulnerability issues identified during qualification receive priority treatment and are routed accordingly.

Enhanced Personalisation

Working with third-party software has improved agent visibility on customer factors, allowing for more tailored service and accurate advice.

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

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