Energy companies face constant challenges, such as regulatory changes. Digitization and automation offer opportunities to address these challenges and create profitable business models in the energy industry.
Automating call quality audits can improve efficiency and ensure compliance, especially in the current fragile economic context. By utilizing voice analysis, companies can identify customer issues and needs, enhance safety, and increase profitability. In fact, McKinsey reports that advanced analytics can not only improve safety and increase customer and employee satisfaction but also increase company profitability by 5% to 10%.
In this article, we will explore how automation can play a key role in call quality auditing and how voice analysis, along with the right technology partner, can help energy companies leverage their call centers to listen to the voice of the customer, improve agent performance, and deliver services in an ever-changing world.
Key challenges of quality audits in the energy sector
Energy companies comply with a wide range of regulations and energy policies. They also face the same demands as any other industry, with the pressure to digitally transform their business models to better adapt to changes and deliver the same level of customer service offered by consumer-focused companies.
1. Regulatory compliance
Energy service companies are subject to different levels of regulation, state and municipal commissions, not to mention specific regulations for the use of call centers in the industry.
Complying with these regulations is crucial to avoid fines and penalties, and maintaining high standards of customer care is essential to achieve good customer satisfaction scores. Customers expect up-to-date communications, easy bill payments, and access to advanced technologies and services.
2. Lack of scalability
Due to the massive volume of interactions that agents handle, it is practically impossible to individually listen to every call manually. This leads to the need for using random samples, which increases the risk of overlooking emerging issues and not obtaining a comprehensive picture of service quality.
3. Subjective bias
Due to the limited ability to listen to a limited number of calls per agent, supervisors may catch agents on particularly good or bad calls, leading to a biased understanding of their performance. Moreover, different supervisors may interpret the same issue differently, resulting in subjective evaluations and lack of consistency in identifying and addressing problems. This subjective bias can negatively affect service quality, agent retention, and strategic decision-making.
4. High operational costs
Managers must invest a considerable amount of time and resources to manually listen to and evaluate selected calls. These high operational costs not only involve a significant investment in time and personnel but can also lead to inefficient use of available resources.
Benefits of automation in call quality auditing
Fortunately, the energy sector has a reliable guide to navigate this ever-changing landscape: the voice of the customer. By automatically searching, categorizing, and scoring each agent conversation, voice analysis enables call centers to not only talk to customers but also listen to them and understand them.
Thus, voice analysis and call scoring solutions provide call centers with the tools to establish a collaborative and positive relationship with customers, gaining powerful advantages:
Time and resource savings
Automating the auditing process offers significant benefits, especially in terms of efficiency. By eliminating manual activities and moving them to digital platforms, resources are freed up to focus on higher-value tasks, avoiding the need to hire additional personnel.
Application of predefined and objective evaluation criteria
Data-driven analysis and process optimization are crucial for achieving greater efficiency, productivity, and process excellence. By using real-time data, it is possible to identify disruptions and potential areas for improvement. These insights enable process optimization, implementation of improvements, and informed decision-making to ensure efficient and effective operation of the call center.
Accuracy in call evaluation
Gathering information in the auditing process can be a laborious and time-consuming task. However, using an automation platform allows for integrating data from various sources and providing a comprehensive view, avoiding information loss. Furthermore, automation has streamlined the administrative aspect of the process by collecting information from different systems and presenting it in an organized manner, enabling auditors to perform their tasks more efficiently.
Efficient handling of large volumes of information
Before automating any process, it is crucial to map it to gain visibility and understand how it is carried out. This provides companies with a clear understanding of the processes and can reveal valuable business insights. By bringing together data sources and creating a centralized portal, it is possible to review and optimize processes, resulting in significant annual savings and improved audit trails. Process automation and workflow management are key drivers for digital transformation, allowing for the identification of automation opportunities and the conversion of repetitive tasks into those performed by bots or software.
Quick identification of areas for improvement in customer service
By mapping and automating processes through a centralized platform, all information is automatically captured, ensuring a comprehensive audit and guaranteeing compliance. By modeling and analyzing processes, bottlenecks and potential savings are identified, and robust governance, risk, and compliance management is established to ensure transparency and legal compliance, including industry standards.
Regulatory compliance enforcement
Through voice analysis, calls can be identified where agents do not follow scripts, make calls outside of business hours, or use inappropriate language. Additionally, gaps in compliance with energy efficiency policies and standards can be detected, as well as potential security risks. Furthermore, call recordings can be used as evidence in legal disputes and regulatory compliance hearings, saving time and expenses in these processes.
Agent performance improvement
Implementing automated call monitoring and evaluation solutions enables objective and consistent assessment of agent performance, facilitating precise feedback and identification of areas for improvement. Automatic quality scoring reports assist managers in focusing training and coaching efforts, sharing best practices, and retaining agents. Clearly, investing in the employee experience has a positive impact on companies’ financial results.
Gains in other departments
Sharing the data captured and analyzed through a voice analysis and call scoring solution across the organization brings numerous benefits to different departments. This data allows for the identification of patterns, trends, and connections, aiding in operational improvements and mitigating business risks.
These insights are valuable for customers as common issues can be identified and procedures improved for faster resolution. Data analysis can also reveal the level of customer interest in new technologies, inspiring the development of other services, enabling enrollment campaigns, and increasing customer satisfaction.
Choose the right voice analysis solution for your business
By using Upbe, the energy sector can develop automated quality audits, achieving cost efficiency, increased productivity in your teams, and improved customer service. With its voice analysis technology, you can avoid manual processes and audit a larger volume of calls.
Upbe identifies over 60 categories in calls and generates automatic scores for interactions between agents and customers. Its voice-to-text transcription technology is the most accurate in Spanish, and its scoring system uses artificial intelligence to calculate conversation quality.
With Upbe, you can enhance customer satisfaction by measuring satisfaction in each call and obtaining key insights for improvements in your products and services. You can also improve your sales and marketing campaigns by analyzing phone sales actions and identifying success patterns. Additionally, Upbe helps you with customer retention and loyalty by anticipating potential churn and enabling you to take proactive measures.
And if not, discover below the positive effects of its implementation in the energy sector:
Success case: Agile and objective ranking of your suppliers
Our client’s objective was to understand the quality of sales service and its impact on the business. To do this, specific elements were to be configured in the quality analysis template and audits were to be automated for comprehensive control over situations such as fraud, complaints, good and bad practices. The purpose was to evolve the call management model and gain in-depth knowledge of customers and competition, promoting effective sales and applying conversion levers in non-sales cases.
To this end, an analysis of a random sample of nearly 1,000 sales conducted by telemarketing providers was performed. Inconsistencies in the presentation of sales were identified, so the first step was to unify all the information into a single file. Subsequently, adjustments were made to some quality elements of the existing template to improve its effectiveness. This achieved harmonization of information management and improved the quality of the supplier ranking analysis.
The result was obtaining objective information and a comprehensive analysis that covered aspects such as the percentage of silences, Average Handling Time (AHT), and other relevant metrics to measure the impact on the customer experience based on different providers.
A manual, limited, and subjective process was replaced with broader and more relevant information that allowed for improvement levers to be implemented. Objective data on sales quality and compliance with the sales process were obtained. Finally, a supplier ranking based on objective data was established.
Additionally, an analysis was conducted to understand customer opinions about the service and brand of our client, providing valuable information for future improvements.
In conclusion, thanks to this automated approach to call quality audits, greater agility was achieved in testing new ideas, products, and services, making decisions based on objective and comprehensive data.
Do you want to improve how you analyze call quality in your call center? Contact us to learn more about how Upbe can help improve your business.
