How EnergosbyT Plus solved the problems of automating customer service

2021: Customer Service Automation

Project prerequisites

JSC Energetit Plus supplies electricity and heat to millions of customers. As of March 2021, 13 branches of the company serve 120 thousand organizations and 3.5 million households. The total number of employees of the company is 6,700 people.

Every year, the company receives thousands of requests from customers. Customers apply for various reasons: to conclude a service contract, recalculate or complain about the quality of services. Each request must undergo a clear and fast processing procedure in the company's divisions so that the client receives a high-quality response within the deadlines set by the regulations.

AKELON helped EnergosbyT Plus solve the tasks of digitising customer service in two areas:

Automate processes:

1. Unify handling of requests in different branches

2. Electronize document processing

3. Improve process speed, transparency, and control

Create electronic archive:

1. Create a single base of all company customers

2. Create an electronic archive of client calls from all branches

3. Fill the archive with historical information accumulated during the company's operation

Automate case processes

Conceptually, the handling scheme is as follows:

• Customers contact the company in different ways on different issues.
• All customer cases are registered in the system and sent to work.
• Each application goes through its own processing procedure in the divisions, depending on its type and type of applicant.
• A response is provided to the client through various communication channels.

Unified approach to case registration

Customers can contact the company for one of 280 questions. Each case type has its own specificity and must be processed by different departments.

1. All cases are registered in the system in a single directory. Depending on the type of customer, the service, and the type of case, the required fields are displayed on the card. On the Registration tab, you complete the basic information for the customer and the store. On the Extras tab, specify the specifics of a particular case.

2. The employee then adds the application and accompanying documents to the card. The system checks whether mandatory documents for this type of case are attached and warns if something is missing.

3. After registration, the employee sends an appeal to work. The system automatically determines the desired processing route, depending on the type of customer and the type of case.

Omnichannel customer interaction

Requests come from customers to different departments and in different ways: through service offices, by mail, through EDO, through a call center and the client's personal account. Regardless of the method of receipt, handling of cases in the system is carried out in a unified manner:

1. If the client calls the department directly, the customer service employee registers the appeal and immediately sends it to work.

2. If the appeal is received in paper form through mail, then according to the rules of the company's office, it is registered in the office as an incoming letter. Then, the clerk, through a specialized interface, marks it as a client's appeal, and conducts the initial filling of the appeal. An incoming letter automatically creates a case that arrives in the customer service of the branch, which fills in the parts and sends it to work.

3. To receive calls from the company's website, from the personal account and call center, integration between systems through the corporate data bus is configured. As a result, the client service receives a ready-made card for handling the attached documents. The employee only has to make a check and send an appeal to work.

When you submit an appeal, the client specifies the preferred way to receive the response. Regardless of the type of call and the route of its processing after completion of work, the response is sent to the client in one of the selected ways: through the service office, by mail, through the EDO, by email, through the personal account, through the call center call.

Handling Internal Cases

The processing of requests is carried out decentrally in the branch to which it was received. The processing process is unified, it identifies the process roles that the system supports. A special setup mechanism allows you to set up roles for each store and specify the employees responsible for processing.

Each appeal during the review process passes through several structural divisions. Work within different departments can be organized in its own way and the system supports the following scenarios:

1. All requests to departments pass through the head, who appoints the person responsible for processing a specific application.

2. For each type of request, the department has a responsible employee who processes all incoming applications.

3. Requests are received by a team of specialists of the department, each employee takes another call to work.

With any method of processing calls, at each stage a planned period is determined, at the onset of which an escalation occurs to the manager.

If the request is re-received by the department, it is automatically addressed to the employee who processed it for the first time.

Control of handling of cases

When sending an application to work, the system determines a check period for providing a response to the applicant. The term is determined automatically depending on the reason for the application and the type of applicant. For flexible scheduling, a specialized tool has been developed that allows the system administrator to set deadlines for different situations and define employees for notification.

When a key date is approached and reached, the system generates a notification for employees to take corrective action. In order for users to quickly understand the history of working with the appeal, a special tab Status is made in the card. It records the progress of handling in the divisions in an understandable table. This tool also uses the call center when the client calls to find out the current situation when working with his appeal.

The system provides reports to analyze the effectiveness of the case process. All reports include a baseline sheet and a summary table with aggregated information. The PivotTable allows the user excel to select the section you want to analyze. Part of the data for the report is sent BI to the company system for performance monitoring. KPI

Electronic archive of customer documents

The electronic archive consists of a database of company customers, their documents and folders, in which documents are grouped into categories.

Customer base of the company

When creating DIRECTUM bases in customers, two main tasks were highlighted: to make a quick and convenient search for customers and to exclude the creation of customer doubles in the database.

To search, the system provides several types of cards with information on customers, FL and SL, personal accounts and client contracts. The data are sent to the electronic archive from 3 sources:

1. Customer's historical billing systems. During the project, more than 12 million records were downloaded for customers from 11 historical systems. The data download took about 2 months.

2. Customer's current billing systems. All new clients are created in billing software complexes based on 1C and Oracle. During the project, the DIRECTUM electronic archive was integrated with these systems through the corporate data bus. Thus, all data on new clients, as well as changes on existing clients, are automatically received from billing to DIRECTUM.

3. Create clients manually in DIRECTUM. Sometimes you need to create a client in DIRECTUM manually before you can process cases, such as when you contract a new client. In this case, when synchronizing with billing systems, the data on the client will be updated.

Thus, the system stores millions of customer data, and each customer can have several personal accounts/contracts. To easily search for such a large amount of information, a special interface has been developed that allows you to search for customers quickly and from any known data.

Whenever a customer card is created or changed in the electronic archive, the system checks for duplication of information. During the check, similar customers are searched for by different combinations of name fields, date of birth, name, contact data, personal accounts and contracts. The system does not allow you to create a customer if the check fails. Thus, the system will not allow to create two customers with one email, identifying them as potential doubles.

Electronic Archive Folder Structure

During the company's interaction with the client, many documents accumulate on it - statements, answers, letters. For easy work, all documents for the client are collected by folder, depending on the categories of documents.

A set of folders is created at the time the client is created, and the list of folders and the selection criteria for documents in them are set through a special configuration mechanism.

Documents of clients

Customer documents are entered in the system when processing cases. First, applications with applications are added to the archive, then additional documents that appear when you consider the case and the final response to the case. If official correspondence is conducted with the client through incoming and outgoing letters, then the client's documents are created in the archive as part of standard business processes.

At the time of the launch of the project, two large branches of the company already kept client documents in their SED. During the project, these documents were transferred to the electronic archive in relation to customers. In total, about 1 million documents were transferred, and the procedure itself took 1 month.

Results of the project

Implementation took place during 3 years in the framework of two projects.

At the first stage in 2018-2019. only appeals on heat supply issues were implemented in the system. The project used an iterative approach: during one iteration, several types of calls were taken, they were designed, implemented, tested and pilot operation. As a result of the project, the system was launched and rolled out at several pilot branches, and after the implementation of this stage of the project, the customer independently replicated the finished solution to the remaining thermal branches.

During operation, the customer's working group actively interacted with users and collected feedback. The task of the second project of 2019-2020 was to automate appeals on electricity issues, finalize the system taking into account the accumulated experience of operation and create a single electronic archive. During the project, a similar iterative approach was applied, and as a result, the solution was run in pilot branches and is ready for further replication. In parallel with the implementation, customers and documents were migrated from historical systems.

{{quote 'Digitalization is a powerful tool that can significantly increase the efficiency and profitability of business processes. To keep customers satisfied with the service, we constantly improve the processes in the company. Automation is an important step in this improvement. On the basis of the Directum platform, we have created a powerful tool that helped us organize and accelerate the movement of documents on the Client and improve control over the operation of services, centralize the main processes of processing Customer's appeals through all channels. In fact, all processes were configured in a single digital circuit. Thanks to the created directory of Clients and electronic archive, the data of all clients of the company is stored in a single information space. We managed to increase the speed and efficiency of employee access to documents, automate the main processes for all branches of the company, set up control when working with the Company's Clients, made the processes transparent, - I.I. Bryzgalova, head of the business process management of JSC EnergosbyT Plus. }}

2015: Implementation of a unified document management system

T Plus Group (until July 2015, CES Holding) is the largest producer of thermal energy in Russia and one of the key players in the electricity and heat supply market in the world.

The company has 60 power plants, customers are more than 14 million individuals and more than 160 thousand legal entities of the Russian Federation. The number of employees of T Plus is more than 50 thousand people.

A priority and promising task for T Plus was the launch of the DIRECTUM implementation project at EnergosbyT Plus OJSC, a combined energy retail company (USC) created on the basis of the group's sales assets and dynamically developing in the market for the sale of a complex of housing, communal and energy services. The company's customers include more than 3.4 million households and 120 thousand organizations.

Task

The consolidation process of T Plus Group's generating assets required the introduction of a unified document management system that would formalize and unify the company's internal business processes and ensure transparent interaction between employees.

In August 2014, the vendor's general partner, Akelon, launched a project to automate the work of the office based on DIRECTUM in the T Plus head office. The implementation team had two goals: to accelerate document flow between departments and improve the control of document negotiation processes. In November 2014, the implementation of T Plus Group branches began. All 15 branches of the company were automated. Learn more about the project here.

In September 2015, the system was deployed at Energosbit Plus OJSC, a combined energy retail company created on the basis of the assets of T Plus Holding. Automation was carried out using DIRECTUM Intersystem Cooperation Services (DICS), the interaction services of DIRECTUM systems that allow data exchange between independent installations of the system. Key processes were automated: execution of instructions for incoming correspondence in internal documents, coordination and familiarization with organizational and administrative documents, approval and review of service notes, exchange of outgoing correspondence.

Features of the project

Branches of OJSC EnergosbyT Plus

Implementation projects were implemented at the stage of reorganization of the holding. For 4 months, it was planned to replicate in OJSC EnergosbyT Plus and set up end-to-end DICS processes within the entire T Plus group. During the project, the contractor replaced the company's disparate electronic document management systems with a single USC DIRECTUM system. In this regard, it was necessary to adapt the established processes and rules for working with electronic documents in business units to the new unified processes of the T Plus group, as well as the import of historical data (information on correspondents). Including the performer had to organize end-to-end processes of the T Plus group in Komi, Sverdlovsk and Orenburg branches operating in other systems.

Diagram of "T Plus" group end-to-end processes

The project was implemented in two stages:

1. Replication in OJSC EnergosbyT Plus:

• the customer performed all necessary settings in the USC DIRECTUM system, Akelon conducted an audit of the system configuration;
• set up integration with the Unified Employee Directory (ESA) in 1C to synchronize the staffing of the T Plus group into the USC DIRECTUM system;
• data on counterparties from billing databases and previously used electronic document management systems were loaded into the DIRECTUM OCK system to reduce the work of the office on their establishment when registering documents;
• conducted about 11 remote and face-to-face training seminars for 350 users and consultations in 8 large business units of JSC EnergosbyT Plus;
• Instructions for company users have been developed;
• A list of wishes for the development of the developed solution was formed taking into account the specifics of the work of EnergosbyT Plus OJSC.

2. Organization of T Plus group end-to-end processes:

• set up end-to-end processes using DICS between DIRECTUM OGK, USK and three branches of OJSC EnergosbyT Plus;
• test operation of end-to-end processes was carried out;
• instructions for users of PJSC "T Plus" and OJSC "EnergosbyT Plus" are updated taking into account end-to-end processes according to DICS;
• advice was provided on work within the framework of end-to-end processes during pilot operation.

Outcomes and prospects

"The creation of a single information space made it possible to transfer organizational and administrative documents to electronic, establish work with instructions, make quick access to information, in particular, increase the speed and quality of management decisions," comments Marina Kuzmina, head of corporate IT projects at PJSC T Plus.

During the four months of the project, the following results were achieved:

• 15 branches of the company went to work at DIRECTUM;
• 18,541 users are registered in the system, more than 10,000 active users;
• 2,000 ordinary users were trained.