“We desired to adopt an industry-leading electronic document management solution to improve our customer service levels. OpenText Documentum is now helping us daily to reinforce our company’s customer-focused commitment.”Mark Cobley Manager, Integrated Correspondence Information SystemsBritish Gas

Centrica British Gas improves customer service with OpenTextOpenText™ Documentum™ enables quick access to critical documents

Success story

Enabled tracking, archiving and retrieval of 87 million documents generated, per annum

Increased customer service levels, with relevant customer information available instantly

Saved time and money by reducing customer call handling times

Ensured compliance

Centrica British GasIndustry• Energy

Solution• OpenText™ Documentum™

Services• OpenText Professional Services

Results

Centrica British Gas improves customer service with OpenText

British Gas, part of the Centrica Group, is the largest energy supplier to Britain’s domestic and business market segments. The company provides gas and electricity services to 15.7 million residential accounts and more than one million small and medium business (SMB) and enterprise business users. Because the company operates in a highly competitive market, consistently achieving high levels of customer service is of critical importance. In recent years, British Gas has invested in systems and people to improve customer service. A key element of this is the ability to provide information to front-line agents to enhance their ability to deal with customer inquiries quickly and effectively.

Instant document access for front-line staffMark Cobley, manager, Integrated Correspondence Information Systems, British Gas, explained that while Customer Service advisors had access to the SAP® Billing and Oracle® Siebel® CRM systems, a number of additional disparate systems were used to access customer correspondence. Furthermore, the systems did not provide an exact view of the letter sent to the customer. Customer inquiries were taking longer to handle and, on occasion, the call had to be transferred to another staff member.

“Our Energy Supply business receives more than 200,000 calls each week from customers to discuss their energy accounts,” Cobley said. “Our Service and Repair business can receive 160,000 calls per week from customers wanting to book a boiler repair service, particularly during the autumn and winter months. Yet our front-line service teams were not able to instantly retrieve an exact image of customer correspondence, such as energy bills, to enable customer inquiries be dealt with in a timely manner.

“We wanted to give our customer service representatives instant access to relevant documents, including gas and electricity bills, non-payment debt-related letters and inbound letters received from our customers.”

Cobley noted that 200,000 energy bills and 70,000 letters are sent out to customers every day. All of these documents are captured and made available in a centralized document management solution in order to overcome this challenge. Cobley also explained that the company has six energy customer service centers located throughout the United Kingdom. “We wanted all of our staff located within our contact centers to be able to view, print or email a copy of a particular item of correspondence, as required, to resolve a customer inquiry.”

Finally, Cobley explained that British Gas receives approximately 3,500 inbound customer letters per day. The solution needed to provide a method for capturing the inbound letters and storing them for quick retrieval. “The long-term goal is to have a single source for accessing customer correspondence,” he said.

OpenText Documentum fits the billBritish Gas selected OpenText Documentum to provide a centralized electronic document management solution. All outbound letters, including energy bills, debt collection correspondence, connection letters and similar critical customer communications, are automatically transferred to Documentum from the print center. In total, Documentum will archive and manage approximately 87 million documents per year, enabling customer service staff to access these at the click of a button on the CRM system.

Similarly, inbound letters are scanned and a copy loaded into Documentum in addition to the copy sent into the back office for action.

“The pilot approach also helped us ensure that OpenText Documentum would be acceptable to the solution’s larger user community. As it turned out, they liked Documentum very much, and it was quickly adopted by the rest of the relevant staff.” Mark Cobley Manager, Integrated Correspondence Information SystemsBritish Gas

Centrica British Gas improves customer service with OpenText

Today, 5,000 British Gas customer service personnel based across six contact centers use the Documentum solution to view the information required to support British Gas customers. “British Gas has joined forces with Sainsbury’s, the British-based supermarket chain, to supply cus-tomers under the Sainsbury’s Energy brand where customers often sign up in the store, and the signed contracts are captured on a sales tablet and transferred into the Documentum repository,” said Cobley.

OpenText Professional Services for best practiceCobley stated that British Gas relied on OpenText Professional Services:

“When we selected Documentum, we started with a pilot program. OpenText helped us with the solution installation and implementa-tion, as well as the knowledge transfer to ensure that our internal project and support teams gained the skills required to maintain and enhance the system. We wanted to make certain that we were using Documentum optimally. We continue to use OpenText Professional Services to ensure that we adopt best practice.”

“The pilot approach also helped us ensure that OpenText Documentum would be acceptable to the solution’s larger user community,” said Cobley. “By using a pilot, we could iron out any issues that might have been encountered before going live. We also knew that if our pilot team liked the new solution, its use would spread throughout the organization. As it turned out, they liked Documentum very much, and it was quickly adopted by the rest of the relevant staff.”

Meeting compliance requirementsCobley noted that OpenText Documentum will also enable the company to meet its compliance obligations. “The current processes in place for meeting the regulations set out by the Financial Services Authority, which apply to our Service and Repair business, are often time-consuming and there are plans to use Documentum to make correspondence available at the touch of a button. A full history of paper-based and email correspondence between British Gas and the customer is available. Documentum can now be used for auditing.”

Improving customer serviceImplementing Documentum has produced substantial customer and staff experience improvements. “First, because customer service personnel have the right information at their fingertips, they are able to reduce the amount of time on the telephone with each customer. The integration of OpenText Documentum provides our staff with an exact view, in full color, of every bill or letter. Prior to this, many of our documents were viewed in SAP; while this contained the in-formation, it was in a different format.” One user said, “This system gives you the ability to talk to customers about their bills and letters with confidence.” Another user said, “For the first time, we can see the exact information contained on the bill and can easily refer to it in our conversations.”

About OpenTextOpenText, The Information Company™, enables organizations to gain insight through market leading information management solutions, on-premises or in the cloud. For more information about OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX) visit opentext.com.

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