The new UK Contact Centre Utilities Report from ContactBabel is now available. The report explores the structure, growth, technology, HR, and commercial issues facing contact centres within the utilities industry.
The report contains data from multiple large-scale surveys of hundreds of UK contact centres and is the definitive study of utility customer contact operations.
The utilities landscape is constantly evolving
Utilities are expanding beyond essential services like water, gas, and electricity to include new areas such as telephony and broadband. Also, while established utilities have reported job losses and consolidation, the emergence of new players, including green energy suppliers and aggregators, has evened this out.
When it comes to differentiation customer service is an important factor, but price is still the primary driver. The industry has also been hit hard by wholesale gas prices resulting in smaller operators disappearing. This has impacted the number of contact centres in the industry but as customers transfer to the larger organisations the size of contact centre has increased.
More utilities contact centre report findings
When it comes to the average time to answer (ASA) calls the industry lags behind other sectors which poses a significant challenge. Although call durations have dropped from an average of 10 minutes there is still a long way to go to deliver a high quality of service. This is despite of the high usage of technology within the sector.
The recent pandemic has reduced the demand in offices and corporations due to the shift to remote working. On the other hand, domestic use has increased as a lot of business activity now conducted at home. Moving forward, debt management is more likely to play a greater role within the contact centre. However, there is also an opportunity for growth as utilities companies are well positioned to promote the concept of the “smart home” to customers.
To take a deeper dive into the industry stats download the full report.
