Utility Companies
World Class Customer Service powered by Continuum™
Office Contact Numbers
TEL: +44 (0) 1932 250000FAX: +44 (0) 1932 250001
Email: enquiries@charter-uk.com
Complaint Handling Solutions for Utility Companies
The utilities market has faced significant challenges since deregulation. UK gas and electric suppliers must now satisfy regulations enforced by the industries regulator Ofgem, and the independent consumers watchdog, Energywatch. In the water industry, The Consumer Council for Water represents the interests of customers regarding price, service and value for money; as well as investigating complaints within England and Wales.
In the competitive electricity and gas environment, and with similar conditions expected for the water industry, consumers have more choice than ever, giving rise to much higher expectations of service levels.
Research has shown that customers repeatedly identify, timely but comprehensive responses to customer complaints as being essential to good customer service. The regulators agree, and by law gas and electric companies are fined £20 for every written complaint not responded to within 10 days.
John Hanlon, chair of Energywatch's Scottish committee, states:
"Companies should be using complaints to help them design a better service for consumers. But, if the industry cannot clean up its act, then complaints are essential if we are to take action against the worst offenders."
The upshot of all this is that to improve customer retention, support brand stretch and satisfy the regulators and watchdogs most utility companies are now focusing internally to improve their customer service and reduce costs, so that the administration of their various services is much more stream-lined and efficient.
Charter Continuum Solutions for Utilities
Charter UK produce a industry specific configuration of its Charter ContinuumT solution providing a range of features developed specifically to satisfy the needs of utility companies.
These include:
- Complaint and written correspondence management
- Support for the DG7 written complaint reporting
- Support for compensation payments generated as a result of the guaranteed standards schemes
- Seamless integration with back-office systems (CRM, Finance, Job Management etc.)
- Automatic customer contact history tracking
- Service level driven workflow and task management
- Multi-department case resolution collaboration
- Operational, ad-hoc, dashboard and exception reporting
"We wanted to provide as many methods as possible for our customers to contact us, whilst at the same time ensuring that our response performance exceeded the standards set by the industry’s regulator. Charter Continuum™ is a day-to-day tool which allows us to manage feedback effectively from all sources and ensures we reach and exceed our targets. The reporting function tells us where improvements can be made so that we can pass on the benefits to our customers in good time."
Jill Jones, Customer Relations Manager at Thames Water
