High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Care

At Smarter Business, we aspire not only to produce satisfied customers, but to produce loyal customers. We do this by matching each customer with the best possible contract and by providing tailored, personal advice. In the last few years, our proactive customer contact strategy and other initiatives have successfully transformed the customer experience. Here’s how we achieved this:

Proactive customer contact strategy

Having an effective customer contact strategy involves more than just automated emails. As the customer progresses along their journey, they need different touchpoints to help them with any queries and ensure that services are being delivered to their expectations.

Having dedicated account managers contact customers via both email and phone calls maintains open lines of communication throughout the energy procurement process. For example, companies can set triggers for account managers to call customers at different points along the customer journey:

• Pre-live call – Account managers introduce themselves and ensure a smooth transition to their services. This helps customers feel a sense of security and know who to contact for assistance and queries.
• Live call – The account manager calls the customer to confirm that their supplied meter reading is correct and that their contract has gone live, and to answer any queries that the customer may have.
• Post-live call – Once the customer has received their first bill, account managers call to check that everything is running smoothly.
• Anniversary call – Calling customers every year to wish them a happy anniversary and to gather any feedback on services rendered.

Customer feedback

Sending out regular customer surveys helps us provide a better service. For example, we discovered that our customers were perceiving their quoting time as too long, so we responded by building a cloud-based, custom-built pricing engine which provides a wide-market pricing comparison and reduced quoting time by 300%.

Efficient case logging

Giving each query or complaint is a case number and assigning it to a dedicated customer services manager means that it’s unlikely that service requests will go unanswered. Our custom-built resource planner also ensures a fast turnaround time, and an omnichannel approach means that account managers can be reached via a direct customer services line, email, website, or live chat.

Over and above the dedicated customer services team, having a separate Quality Assurance (QA) department ensures total compliance, as these specialists are upskilled in industry knowledge, DPA, and Ofgem’s code.

Serving the customer of today

Customers of today are more engaged when it comes to energy. They are informed and price-savvy, and they want suppliers that can meet their unique requirements. It’s up to consultants to match these needs by providing an unbiased sale at the best possible price and ensuring that the customer journey is 100% transparent.

Cutting-edge technology

In the modern world, consultants and customers should be supported with cutting-edge cloud-based technology, such as:

• A custom-built pricing engine compares whole-of-market prices and provides instant, unbiased quotes
• Industry-leading software to monitor the energy market closely and trigger calls to customers when they may be able to lock in a better deal on their gas or electricity.
• Energy analysis software that sets up cost and consumption reports which analyse usage based on set parameters and provides the opportunity to save costs, budget accordingly and identify hours and days of peak usage.
• Triggers that alert customers when their energy consumption profile changes, ensuring consistent and optimal energy efficiency and identifying any potential waste.
• A cloud-based platform for customers to manage their portfolios, procurement and invoicing, giving control back to the customer.
• Allowing customers to see a breakdown of all commercial energy costs and future contracts on a daily basis, empowering them to take advantage of favourable market conditions.

Using the power of technology – with a personal touch – Smarter Business is transforming customer care in the energy consultancy industry and addressing the needs of an increasingly engaged customer base.