Lithys 2017: Npower Ltd.- Social Support Champion

Lithys 2017: Npower Ltd.- Social Support Champion

As of now, we hand off less than 3% of our work. Social Media Management gives us the tools to be able to manage how we prioritise the inflow but also how we manage the expectations with the customer. 

 

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Npowerteaser (1).pngCompany:  Npower Ltd.                                                               

Entry submitted by: Phill Fothergill (Operational Lead – Social Media Team)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/npowerhelp

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/npowerofficial/

Lithy category:  Social Support Champion

 

Npower Ltd supplies energy to around 5 million domestic homes in the UK and as part of the Innogy group specialising in supply and generating energy to homes across Europe.

 

Using Social Media as part of the Digital and business customer service strategy, coupled with the Lithium Social Media Management, has allowed us to converse with our customers like never before in the hope to build and maintain our relationship with the general public by giving a first class service throughout.

 

Since August 2013, when we first introduced dedicated channels on Twitter and Facebook for customer service, the demand for social media customer service has really grown. We started with 3 specialist advisors which has increased to 13 as of today with further plans to increase headcount. All of the guys are specifically trained to deal with Social language, written communication and have a  wide variety skill set to resolve complaints. As of now, we hand off less than 3% of our work. Social Media Management gives us the tools to be able to manage how we prioritise the inflow but also how we manage the expectations with the customer. As of today we have 37,000 customers that follow us on our two main Twitter channels (@npowerhelp and @npowerhq) and 12,000 likes on our official Facebook page, both having an 7% organic growth month on month.

 

Reminiscing, since the introduction of Lithium we have made some customer centric, tactical changes operationally around how quickly we are responding to our customers. In February 2016 the average time to send our first response to a customer was 13 hours (we wanted to bring ourselves in line with the best in class brands on social media), however, in today’s operation using Lithium Social Media Management we respond within 20 minutes, which is a 97% reduction. What we now see is we are able to keep 85% of our customers in the social media channel when compared to only 68% in February 2016, which equates to c375k calls/Live Chats deflected. From the ones we don’t keep in channel is more likely that they have self- served rather contacted us through an alternative channel; this is evident through reporting on repeat contact which is currently around 4%! Without the sharp and trustworthy analytics that Lithium offers we would have been limited to a ‘circa number’; however accurate figures are much better!

 

On every interaction we propose a CSAT survey to the customer, which Lithium has the compatibility to include our own set of questions. We regularly see a CSAT score of 85-88% (in comparison to business overall – 66% [as of Q1 2017]. We also see a 90% rate of customers who would use Social Media as their channel of choice for service. Not only do we track a satisfaction score, we monitor and record a sentiment value of the conversation. Year to date we had 40% conversion of customers that started in a negative or neutral position but ended the conversation in a positive way.

 

Here are some of the comments left by our customers:

“I always ask for #star aka Jess as she is always GREAT! I'd like to think that she gets the recognition she rightly deserves. Please let her know this. I did have cheaper quotes when looking for tariffs this time and chose to stay with NPOWER knowing that Star would be there to assist when needed.”

 

“Alan himself has handled the situation both professionally and promptly. Although the situation is still ongoing with N-Power I can't fault Alan's work. He has handled everything effectively. Hopefully the problem with N-Power can be resolved but Alan's work has been 5/5.Thanks”

 

Jade was absolutely fantastic. She was there to update reassure and answered any questions I had with my query. My electric had been taken over by another provider (not my choice) and Jade keep me updated and at all times and was even messaging just to let me know she was still dealing even if no update as such. Jade was great and I'm so pleased we had her dealing with our case. Thanks Jade :)”firstrepsons.png

 

 

 

 

Comments

This reads just too good to be true: Cost saving and substantial customer experience improvements going hand in hand. Very impressive.

We have kept it as our smoking gun for 2017 Claudius 🙂 Thank you! 

Massive well done to the Social npower team for being so flexible and championing change!

Great submissions, as you say "Go team nPower" 🙂