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Utility Callcenter Benchmarking

Contact Janice Morrison, Director, to schedule a meeting to discuss this opportunity.  Janice can be reached at 215-641-2254 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . To get a copy of this article in PDF click here.

Driving Results Your Utility Commission is Looking For

Research shows that satisfaction with the call center experience is a driving factor in enhancing overall satisfaction with the utility company. For utilities, maintaining high customer satisfaction is crucial. It helps them gain support from regulatory boards on issues like rate increases, rebates, and energy programs. Yet, not many utilities know how to integrate call center satisfaction into their customer satisfaction program.

TRC has a program that addresses the importance of call center satisfaction
* Our Utilities Call Center Benchmarking research program (geared toward electric and gas utilities) gets at both high level call center satisfaction metrics and overall loyalty metrics as well as addressing key areas that our experience has shown to be important factors for call center satisfaction.
* It offers peer benchmarking – normative data – to gauge where your company stands relative to other like utilities.
* Because it is a shared program, it is relatively inexpensive– as low as $4,900 per call center, per quarter.

What you get
* Quarterly, you receive management dashboard reports in a user-friendly PowerPoint format on key measures depicting your call center against peers (you have the choice of remaining anonymous or not) best-in-class, and group averages. *
* Quarterly, we will also send you a standardized banner of cross-tabs, delivered electronically in an easy-to-navigate online package, so you can evaluate segments that may not be included in the management report.
* Year end, you receive a full report with detailed findings, an executive summary individualized for your organization with recommendations and an explanation of the impact modeling (discussed below).

How it works
* Twice per quarter you send your contact lists in a standardized Excel format with the names and telephone numbers of the customers who contacted your call centers within the past 3 months.
* We conduct 200 telephone interviews per call center, per quarter using a standard survey with high-level measures and other key metrics like, ease of transfer, knowledge of CSR, length of time on hold, and more.
* TRC conducts the analysis evaluating individual call center scores, utility group call center averages and best in class.
* At the end of the year, we will conduct a key driver analysis to pinpoint specific attributes that, if improved, will help increase overall perceptions of the call experience.

Knowing which levers to pull
Our analysis will enable you to pinpoint which factors have the greatest impact on the customer call experience...for example, what impact does "wait time" have or how important is the professionalism of the rep? Using our proprietary tools we can uncover the impacts these have on call center satisfaction and on each other. This analysis will be run annually against the data from all participants. A focused, easy to understand executive summary will explain the results.

We can also run this analysis for individual call centers or at utility company level for an additional cost.
Fig A
Impact on Call Experience Attribute
Primary Driver Attribute A
Attribute B
Attribute C
Medium Driver Attribute D
Lower Driver Attribute E
Attribute F
Attribute G
Attribute H

Understanding where to put your resources
Knowing which specific attributes will improve satisfaction is extremely important, and the key driver analysis gives you that. Just because a metric is identified as a driver does not necessarily mean that is where you should be dedicating valuable resources. As shown in Fig A (above) and Fig B here below, Attributes A, B, and C are all high drivers, and initially you may consider this as your first area of focus. However, because these attributes already have high performance ratings, focusing on Attribute E may actually produce greater returns on improving overall satisfaction with the call experience. It has more potential for improvement.
Fig B
*
This type of analysis, coupled with what you will learn from the group benchmarks, will help guide your strategic and tactical plans for improving satisfaction with the call experience and with the utility in general.

While the importance weights will be calculated for the group as a whole, these quadrant maps will be plotted for each individual firm. For those who purchase individualized impact modeling, we will provide a totally custom quadrant map.

Want to know more?
Contact Janice Morrison, Director, to schedule a meeting to discuss this opportunity. Janice can be reached at 215-641-2254 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 
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