A Leading Utility Reduces Customer Complaints by 80 Percent; Drives Down Operational Costs

The energy market is dynamic and highly competitive, often with consumers switching suppliers constantly. While managing costs and competitively pricing offerings is crucial, customer service is just as critical to ensure sustained growth.

Our client is a leading gas and electricity provider in the United Kingdom and North America. To fuel its growth, the client was seeking to significantly increase its customer service while reducing operational costs.

In their transformation to a more consumer-centric company, the client chose to partner with WNS.

The WNS Solution

With a team comprising over 1,000 people located in multiple delivery centers, WNS handles customer care processes for the client. The team at WNS interacts with consumers through all channels of communication including email, white mail and outbound calling. WNS also manages back office exceptions billing, a crucial financial back office process, which enables the client to identify and bill customers accurately by plugging potential revenue leakages.

Key features of the WNS solution

• Strong partnership with the client - WNS helped the client implement its first SAP platform by becoming subject matter experts on the new system, and helping review business rules for better process management

• Rapid ramp up - To respond to a rapid increase in customer interaction volumes – 100,000 to 2,300,000 in just eight months – the team quickly and successfully scaled from 26 to over 1,500 people, including a broad range of skill sets

• Robust training platform - While scaling the team quickly, WNS was able to revamp training materials to better balance theory and hands-on practice. WNS created a training-to-operations handover manual, and set up a comprehensive training and operations support system for new team members

• Focus on quality - WNS implemented Six Sigma and LEAN projects at transition, laying the foundation for continuous program improvement, resulting in

  • Higher quality transition by embedding Black Belts to design quality model, defining SLAs and having a robust deployment process in place

  • Rapid learning curve, reducing the time for a team member to reach optimum productivity, and increasing FTE productivity by 15 percent

  • Digitizing of key tasks by eliminating non-value added steps and standardizing best practices

  • Improving consumer facing programs to reduce repeat contact rates, in turn impacting consumer satisfaction

  • Improving debt recovery by identifying reasons for debt accrual, and recommending a new tariff and measurement system. This project delivered a benefit of GBP 8 million in the year 2006-07 and was awarded the Chairman’s Club Award by the client

  • Reducing backlog from 15 million to 7 million by collaboratively working with the client on an OTF (Organization To Fix) project

  • Automating key process steps including an updates management system, contact creator mechanism and template manager for correspondence and email interactions. For example, a letter macro deployed in a correspondence process increased productivity by 20 percent.

Extending Your Enterprise

The WNS team extends the client’s enterprise by supporting initiatives to drive improved customer service whilst meeting rigid operational constraints. Substantial gains were observed in the consumer satisfaction scores across various parameters as a result of client investment within the relationship supporting the fast ramp-up and consolidation of customer service processes.

Benefits delivered by the WNS team

• Exceptional reduction in backlogs from 15 million to just over 1 million in eighteen months

• Reduction in customer complaints by 80 percent within twelve months of go live

• Realization of over GBP 8 million in the year 2006-07 in twelve months through Six Sigma programs focused on restructuring the debt accrual process and identification of interest leakage in supplier payments.