“ContactPro is a huge help for managing our resources and enab-ling us to better take into account economic aspects when managing interactions”

Jochen Dornbach, Director Contact Management and Optimization, Süwag

Powering Customer Service Across Germany, more than 1,100 power companies struggle to win the favor of customers. This competitive environment and an increasing number of customers willing to switch providers has turned customer service into one of the most important assets for utility companies of all sizes. Süwag, a multi-regionally operating company has a strong focus on optimizing service processes to better meet customers’ and prospects’ demands.

Power in the region

Süwag Energie AG is strongly established in the South-West of Germany and has a customer base of ap-proximately 900,000 residential and commercial cus-tomers. The company supplies energy, heat and gas. With a workforce of around 1,800 the group also develops and builds alternative energy concepts and helps companies, municipalities and the people in the regions to make effi cient and economic use of energy. Reliability, innovation and customer centricity also dis-tinguish its sales and services unit Süwag Vertrieb AG & Co. KG, a full subsidiary of Süwag AG. The com-pany has approximately 500 employees and provides the entire range of sales related services. Tasks range from energy procurement and forward-looking en-ergy concepts to customer-oriented sales and services.

Engaging with Süwag

Throughout the region, Süwag runs ten service centers to provide face-to-face contact and customer service. The central contact organization is a customer service center handling customer interactions via telephone and in writing. It can be reached via a toll-free hotline as well as via a web-based contact form, which was re-designed in late 2013. There is also a toll-free call back service ensuring that individual appointment requests can be scheduled effi ciently. Distributed over three different locations, this service center employs a staff of approximately 230 employ-ees. They advise customers on products and tariffs, answer queries regarding invoices, process orders and customer data changes and manage all Süwag’s resi-dential and commercial customers enquiries. In addi-tion a team of outsourcers handle a range of specifi ed

service tasks such as conducting post-call customer sat-isfaction surveys or handling overfl ow call volume. The current contact volume is approximately 1.2 million contacts per year and the number is growing steadily. For the time being, Süwag customers still prefer the telephone as a means of contact. Approximately two thirds of enquiries are by telephone; the remaining third is more or less split evenly between correspond-ence via letter, email and fax. New web-based communication channels recently be-came available as well. As of March 2014, a dedicated chat-team will be in place to manage customer enquir-ies via instant messaging. Members of this team are particularly experienced and received training for the specifi c requirements of conversing with customers via chat. “We are facing the challenge of having to deal with an increasing number of contacts while the business volume remains the same. This means that effi ciency and cost-effectiveness are of particular relevance,” said Jochen Dornbach, Director Contact Management and Optimization, Channel Sales Management, Süwag. ”Obviously we don’t want to lower or jeopardize our service quality. On the contrary, our objective is con-tinuous improvement. Mastering this balancing act re-quires innovative technology.”

T

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Leveraging existing technology infrastructure

ContactPro is a flexible, modular and customizable cli-ent-server solution for contact centers. ContactPro em-powers agents to efficiently serve customers in today’s demanding world of multi-channel communication. The state-of-the-art technology solution helps contact centers to leverage their existing Avaya infrastructure while decreasing contact center costs and increasing customer satisfaction.ContactPro brings the desktop into a structured work environment. Designed to perform many “desktop middleware” tasks, the solution can be customized to best reflect specific agents’ requirements and empower them to act as a successful intermediary for customer enquiries. Its modular built software allows virtually un-limited integration options and interoperability. At Süwag, all proven solutions have remained in de-ployment, in updated release versions. Contacts are routed via a connection to Avaya Interaction Center, real-time and presence information is integrated via Avaya Communication Manager and Unified Com-munications within ContactPro. CCT implemented the quality monitoring and IVR systems and integrated their features in ContactPro. Third-party systems such as SAP CRM and the OCR (optical character recognition) text recognition for archiving and processing letters were also integrated seamlessly. The gradual changeover to ContactPro was based on service classes. To further minimize the risk, the changeover was steered by the workforce manage-ment to complete all old contacts first and route all new contacts to desktops equipped with ContactPro. The changeover was successfully completed in just un-der three months.

Intelligent Communication

Powerhouse biomass-derived

Making good things even better

In 2013, an enterprise-wide initiative to optimize all processes and customer relations lead to establishing a new server environment within the company. This new initiative required software updates and was the trig-ger used to evaluate possible updates of the customer communications solution. The customer service center was built in 2008 and although Süwag was still happy with it, the technology that was deployed at that time no longer fulfilled all current requirements and emerg-ing customer communications requests. The new requirements included higher performance, increased efficiency as well as new contact options and the ability to process new document formats, such as the latest Microsoft Office formats and the ODF (Open Document Format) standard for office files. “Basically, we were keen to hang on to what we had, but wanted an improved, modern version of it,” explained Jochen Dornbach.

Trusted partners

CCT was put in charge of the upgrade. The contact center specialist has been fully familiar with the Süwag customer service center for many years. In 2008, Avaya partner CCT had planned and implemented a compre-hensive multichannel solution based on an Avaya com-munication platform. CCT’s scope of services included integration with all appropriate business systems and support throughout the entire implementation process.With the upgrade planned for 2013 CCT planned to help Süwag improve the management of all customer service interactions and therefore recommended to de-ploy their ContactPro software which was complemen-tary to the existing platforms and solutions.

“We have been very satisfied with CCT from the start – their consulting expertise, the implementation, their entire contact center know-how”. Jochen Dornbach

“With its Avaya-certified ContactPro software CCT have added a convincing facet to their competence profile. The new solution enables us to better leverage our existing infrastructure and delivers significant added value.”Jochen Dornbach

“The software is extremely user-friendly and fl exible, its entire ‘look and feel’ is engaging.”Jochen Dornbach

Providing added value for staff…

As sometimes happens when new systems are intro-duced, users were slightly skeptical of the change. However, any worries the agents may have had were quickly dispersed as they experienced no start-up hurdles whatsoever. “The software is extremely user-friendly and fl exible, its entire ‘look and feel’ is engag-ing,” said Jochen Dornbach. “Our employees’ feed-back is very positive.” For instance, agents appreciate that the desktop layout can be customized according to their specifi c tasks, for example hiding or showing task fi elds, or adapting to individual preferences such as the position of the di-aling keypad. This requires no IT know-how. Anyone familiar with Microsoft Windows Offi ce should be able to make these adjustments easily. The desktop provides a SIP (Session Initiated Protocol) phone dialer, displays the voice status and provides information on media integration, real-time contact data and presence. It also features integrated customer identifi cation with customer history and a customer is-sue list. When a customer has been identifi ed, for ex-ample by his email address or account number (via SAP integration) all relevant information is displayed – his data, the current query and his entire contact history, completed or still open. Not only does this mean the agent is perfectly well in-formed and can convey this to the customer (“I can see that you…”), it also means that, with just one click agents can close all enquiries referring to the same is-sue once that issue is resolved, no matter which chan-nels had been used. “That is a tremendous added value,” said Jochen Dornbach. “This ensures that an issue will not be handled in parallel by another agent, so potential duplicate work is eliminated.“ContactPro also optimized the template management for written correspondence. In addition to enabling ac-cess to letter templates via an interface to Microsoft Word, the client integrates Süwag-specifi c components for individual emails and chat. Customized adaptations to the ready-made version of the framework solution include automation of back of-fi ce archiving. Previously that was restricted to those documents that had been scanned with the document management software. Now, following the call, a new

window with a barcode and a link to SAP opens auto-matically. With just one click the agent selects the ap-propriate archiving system according to the document type. This relieves staff and ensures considerable time savings.

… company and customers

“ContactPro is a huge help for managing our resources and enabling us to better take into account economic aspects when managing interactions,” as Jochen Dorn-bach summed up. At the same time, the efforts also pay off in terms of customer satisfaction. Customer surveys show that the satisfaction with customer service quality and speed have “defi nitely gone up” in recent months.

“We have been very satisfi ed with CCT from the start – their consulting expertise, the implementation, their entire contact center know-how,” Jochen Dornbach concluded. “With its Avaya-certifi ed ContactPro soft-ware CCT have added a convincing facet to their com-petence profi le: The new solution enables us to better leverage our existing infrastructure and delivers signifi -cant added value.”

Products and solutions

Avaya Multimedia Call Center and Quality Monitoring CCT ContactPro optical character recognition Smartfi x OCR IXOS archiving solution SAP CRM

CCT und ContactPro

CCT is leading the way in multi-media customer experience solutions. Based on Avaya technology, CCT helps com-panies communicate with a new generation of customers, through social media, chat, and video, ensuring their contact center agents adapt to the changing customer landscape, decreasing contact center costs and providing deeper relationships with their customers.ContactPro is a multichannel software solution developed by CCT. The software complements Contact Center products and clients by Avaya and other leading vendors and can be customized to the users’ processes and ap-plications.

ContactPro Functions and Features

view of all customer activities via all channels

all channels, incl. chat and social media

integrated productivity tools

confi gurable dash / wall board

UC and Presence integration

web and mobile device support

dynamically confi gurable client

P2P architecture

multi-tenant design

modular and scalable

integration of applications

fl exible database connection

Süwag Architecture T

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For more information about these applications and enhancement modules please go to:www.cct-solutions.com

Intelligent CommunicationCCT Deutschland GmbH Heinrich-Hertz-Strasse 5 60486 Frankfurt am Main Germany Tel. +49 69 71914969-0kontakt@cct-solutions.com

CCT Software LLC2020 North Bayshore Drv. Appt. 240833137 Miami FLUnited States of AmericaPhone +1 844 720-3897contact@cct-solutions.com

CCT Europe GmbH Sumpfstrasse 266312 SteinhausenSwitzerlandTel. +41 41 74842-22contact@cct-solutions.com

CCT ContactPro is a registered trademark of CCT. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.