Case Study: Stadtwerke Hamm Reduce Call Volumes With babelforce

Stadtwerke Hamm is the backbone of Hamm, Germany. They keep the lights on, heat up homes, and make sure the water is running.

They also take care of the bus schedules, handle the port, keep the pools filled, and even ensure the Internet’s working. But they’re not just about delivering municipal services – they want to deliver them well.

They care about their customers, keep prices fair, and are always thinking about the future – particularly in terms of environmental and climate protection.

Challenges

Stadtwerke Hamm were operating with a bare-bones system – a blend of hardware and softphone technology that simply provided a connection.

This system had served them well for years, but times were changing rapidly, and the sudden shift in customer interaction patterns brought on by the pandemic made the limitations of their existing system more apparent.

There were no insights about who their customers were, how many were waiting in line, or even how many agents were currently on a call. Management had limited data, with access to only basic statistics such as the number of incoming and missed calls.

Their rudimentary system was starting to be a focal point of customer frustration. When no agents were available to answer a call, customers could only hear a busy tone.

They tried to incorporate a text greeting during peak times, but it just wasn’t enough to meet evolving customer needs. Feedback from customers often pointed towards a lack of reachability.

To make things even more challenging, the company was largely in the dark as to the reasons customers were calling, which made it difficult to direct them to the appropriate lines for assistance.

The pandemic brought additional challenges. Many of Stadtwerke Hamm’s customers preferred traditional modes of contact – either through a phone call or a visit to the service centre in person.

But with COVID-19 restrictions preventing face-to-face interactions, the shortcomings of their phone system became even more glaring. It was clear that a change was necessary.

Solution

Stadtwerke Hamm’s leadership knew that they needed to make a change within their support department. They wanted a system that could seamlessly blend automated services with live agent assistance, delivering a balanced, customer-centric experience.

A turning point arrived when one of Stadtwerke Hamm’s sales managers discovered babelforce. The level of autonomy offered set babelforce apart and piqued Stadtwerke Hamm’s interest.

“What appealed to us was that we could do everything on our own. We liked the opportunity to do as many tasks as possible by ourselves,” recalled Julie Pradler, Digital Platform Advisor at Stadtwerke Hamm.

This was a feature that other potential solutions didn’t seem to offer. No-code self-sufficiency was the missing piece of the puzzle, making babelforce a clear winner in their search.

Before bringing in babelforce, Stadtwerke Hamm was grappling with a significant issue – they were unable to discern why their customers were reaching out to them. This problem was twofold.

On an individual level, they lacked the ability to understand the intent behind each customer’s call. This lack of context data made it difficult to deliver personalized service, which affected the quality of customer–agent interactions.

On a broader scale, without insights into the common reasons driving customer calls, Stadtwerke Hamm was left in the dark.

They had no way to identify patterns, understand recurring issues, or take proactive measures to address these concerns before customers had to pick up the phone. The lack of an overarching view of customer intent prevented them from taking steps to mitigate call volumes.

However, all this changed when they implemented their new voicebot from babelforce. Julie remembered: “At the very beginning, we said okay, when a customer is calling, we’d like to know why they’re calling.”

So, her team got to work, setting up a voicebot to query every customer’s reason for calling. It was a great success, and before long the team had already gathered insights from hundreds of customers as to why they were getting in touch.

This gave them the confidence to develop more solutions to even deeper issues, such as monthly payments. These days, things at Stadtwerke Hamm are even more automated.

Julie shared, “When a customer wants to change their monthly payments, they can tell our voicebot ‘I want to change my monthly payment for electricity’”.

Using this simple system, their customers could easily provide their account number and preferred payment amount without ever speaking to an agent. This information would then be automatically sent to the appropriate agent team via email.

Any time a new system is introduced to an organization, there can be a few hurdles to overcome, at least initially. Convincing a customer service team that’s been doing things a certain way for years to embrace a new way of working? That can sometimes feel like mission impossible.

That’s where the babelforce customer success team came to the rescue, showing Stadtwerke Hamm all the opportunities their system offered.

Regular meetings helped iron out any issues, making the transition easier. To make sure everyone got on board with the new platform, babelforce trained three Stadtwerke Hamm team members.

They were given a deep dive into the system and workflows, showing them how to build their own bespoke customer experiences.

Armed with this knowledge, these team members then ran workshops for their colleagues, spreading the know-how throughout the team.

This approach made the transition smoother, helping everyone to quickly get up to speed and learn how to use their new system effectively.

Results

“We looked at our statistics and saw that our sales levels got better and the response from our customers also got better,” said Julie Pradler, Digital Platform Advisor

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

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Author: babelforce
Reviewed by: Megan Jones