Company
Yorkshire Water supplies 1.7 million
UK households with water and sewerage
services. The company manages the
collection, treatment and distribution of
water, supplying around 1.24 billion litres
of drinking water each day.
Their vision is to be "clearly the best
water company in the UK." With Ofwat
positioning them at the top of the annual
league table for operational and customer
service excellence, things are obviously
going in the right direction.
Challenge
Yorkshire Water receives 400,000
incoming customer calls a year purely
about water supply problems, such as low
pressure, burst pipes and water quality.
The increase in water meter usage means
even more customer enquiries.
Although 80% of customer calls are
relatively common and simple to respond
to, the other 20% are complex. Not only
are these complex queries hard to answer,
providing an incorrect response can lead to
a significant increase in costs, unnecessary
engineer call outs and customer
dissatisfaction. Yorkshire Water needed
a knowledge management and customer
service solution advanced enough to
enable its agents to easily handle complex
enquiries. It wanted to make every agent
as good as its best agent by propagating
expertise, best practices and resolution
knowledge to the entire pool of agents.
An intuitive, dialogue-based user interface
would make the knowledge easy to use.
At the operational level, the company
wanted to improve first-call resolution,
reduce call handling and wrap-up times
and minimize repeat calls and escalations.
Solution
In order to deliver an informed and
personalised customer service experience,
Yorkshire Water appointed eGain
to provide knowledge management
technology and best practices in customer
service processes. eGain’s knowledge
management solution is trusted by
numerous enterprises around the world to
improve contact centre performance, boost
service quality and enhance customer
experience. In addition, Yorkshire Water
chose eGain due to its experience in the
utilities sector and the ability to easily
integrate eGain software with existing
customer relationship management
(CRM) systems to provide personalised
service, leveraging data residing in such
systems.
Implementation
Partnering with eGain, Yorkshire Water
implemented eGain Knowledge+AI™,
eGain’s award-winning AI-powered
knowledge management solution for
contact centre agents. eGain’s professional
services team helped them design best
practice processes for knowledge capture,
creation and management as well as
customer service delivery.
The knowledge base now contains over
750 resolutions and is being used by 130
agents. The system drives efficient and
effective conversations between agents and
customers, improving service consistency,
first-call resolution and compliance with
corporate processes, while minimising the
number of unnecessary engineer callouts.
Yorkshire Water trusts eGain
eGain Knowledge+AI increases first call resolution,
measurably improves customer satisfaction and reduces
unnecessary field visits thus saving millions of pounds
CASE STUDY
Key results for eGain
Knowledge+AI
Cut unnecessary engineer call outs,
reducing an average of £30 per
call, thus saving the company £3.6
million per year.
Achieved greater than 30% first
call resolution on operational
contacts, with further improvement
anticipated.
Agent training time reduced by 25%.
Agents are able to handle a wider
range of enquiries.
Marked improvement in employee
satisfaction.
Reduction in call handling and wrap-
up times.
Agents are handling an increased
volume of calls.
Enhanced customer experience and
satisfaction.