Utility companies need to do everything in their power to make sure that their clients are satisfied. If you do a bit of digging online, you will see that there are many complaints from customers regarding utility businesses. From price increases to being unable to get in touch with the company, there are many reasons why customers end up being frustrated. However, this often comes down to poor customer management. A few careful changes can make all of the difference, helping you boost customer satisfaction and establish yourself as a trusted utility firm.
With that being said, let’s take a look at some of the different approaches you can use to boost utility company customer satisfaction:
There is only one place to begin when it comes to your utility company customer satisfaction program, and this is by making the most of a mass texting service.
You may assume that mass texting services are all about bombarding people with promotional offers and special deals. No, think again! That’s not going to do anything in terms of boosting customer satisfaction; it will only decrease it.
Instead, utility companies can use mass texting solutions to ensure their customers are updated with any outages or status issues. You can deliver emergency messages and informational and personalized messages, which can help keep customer satisfaction levels high.
At Text Em All, you can send messages to as many as 50,000 people or as few as five people. This means that you can easily customize your message based on the issue at hand. You also have the option of sending voice-only, text-only, or voice and text messages.
One of the good things about using a leading service like Text-Em-All is scheduling future messages and sending messages immediately.
With a pay-as-you-go service, you are only going to pay for what you need. After all, we realize that there are some months whereby you may only need to send one message and other months where you may need to send several.
However, what makes Text Em All’s service stand out from the crowd is your ability to analyze the effectiveness of your campaign. For instance, you can see who was answered, whose numbers are not working more, who received your voicemail, and so on. This means that you can continue improving so that your mass texting efforts are as effective as possible.
The speed and efficiency of a system like this will enable you to boost customer satisfaction, as you can be sure your clients are not going to be waiting days and days for a response.
Aside from deploying a mass texting service, you can increase customer satisfaction by making sure that it is as easy as possible for customers to make payments.
Offering online statements and billing is one of the best ways to do this. Customers will be able to log in and view how much money they owe, when their next payment date is, change their payment date, and make payments. If customers do not pay via direct debit, they should make manual payments via your website.
This will increase customer service and support because the digital world that we live in today is all about convenience. People do not have the time to call up utility companies and wait to speak to an advisor.
Plus, people care more and more about the planet as we begin to understand our actions' actual consequences. Something as simple as lowering your paper consumption can significantly impact how customers feel about your brand.
This is also a strategy that can be integrated with the above suggestion regarding mass texting services; for example, you can ensure messages are scheduled to inform customers that their statement is ready to view online or that you have received their payment. If a customer has not paid, a text message to let them know can be very much appreciated, as it could be that they forget to make the payment.
Last but not least, you cannot expect to improve your level of customer service if you have no idea how you are performing at the moment. This is why it is essential to make sure that you ask customers for feedback.
Of course, it can be challenging to encourage customers to take the time to fill in a feedback form or complete a survey. This is why we recommend offering an incentive. After all, we all love the opportunity to get something for free, right?
You could, for example, offer to enter the customer into a raffle to win their bills free for a year if they fill in your survey! An opportunity like this would be too good to miss for your customers. At the same time, the money you will lose on one year’s worth of a customer’s payments will be quickly made up with the valuable information you will gain.
So there you have it: an insight into some of the different approaches you can use to boost your utility company's customer service ratings.
After all, customer service is one of the essential ingredients when selecting a utility company, as customers want to know that any issues will be resolved efficiently and professionally.
Deploying the tactics mentioned above, such as using a mass texting service, can ensure your customers are kept informed and satisfied every step of the way.