Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

According to Chartwell’s latest report, Web-based Customer Service in the Utility Industry 2008, more utilities are attracting customers to self-service transactions on the Internet by broadening their online services.

 

The study shows that during the last year, utilities have expanded their Web-based menus to customers and include more services such as bill payment, bill presentment, eBill signup, view payment history, view energy usage and bank drafting signup. These six services are available on Web sites at least 70 percent of organizations across North America.

 

In the past few years, many services have seen tremendous growth. Chartwell notes that viewing of payment history and energy usage has almost doubled in the past three years, and managing account information has almost tripled.

 

Doris Yon, Chartwell’s Customer Care Series research analyst explained in a statement that utilities are catering to customers’ demands and are satisfying their own wishes of lowering costs with additional online services.

 

Yon observed that although utilities have made great strides in improving their online services, few organizations reap the benefits of fully automated processes. Most utilities still require back-end processing on a large number of their services.

 

Web-based Customer Service in the Utility Industry 2008 is based on surveys from 46 North American utilities and also looks at new and emerging online services. This recurring report in Chartwell’s Customer Care Series includes responses from all participating utilities and features analysis detailing issues such as current deployment stage of common Web-based services; figures on customer adoption of certain services; top services being offered, planned and considered; automation and management strategies for various services; and electronic communication with customers