Delivering end-to-end services for a major utility client
Major energy retailer
A market leading energy retailer needed to establish an operations center to support their planned entry into the contestable Victorian energy market in Australia. After a rigorous selection process, Stellar was selected as their partner.
The Challenge
To establish their presence in a new market, the energy retailer required an outsource partner who could support customer acquisition activity, as well as provide the flexibility to grow to manage business growth.
A key challenge in the development of the service was the need to meet stringent State-based audit and regulatory requirements within the utilities industry.
The energy retailer experienced rapid business growth, and quickly identified the need to expand the service to include a substantial volume of administrative back office processing work, along with the introducing new customer interaction functions.
The Solution
Initially Stellar provided a small team of 25 agents managing sales verifications to support the energy retailer's field sales.
Over a period of three years, the service evolved to over 140 agents supporting end-to-end service delivery across all stages of the customer lifecycle, with exponential growth from 0 to 400,000+ customer accounts.
Stellar worked closely with the client to carefully manage the expansion of services provided and the introduction of new capabilities to support the service.
Stellar continues to apply structured change management processes to ensure that all new service developments are formally scoped, approved, documented and implemented.
In collaboration with the energy retailer, Stellar developed auditable and compliant processes and supporting documentation using the experience of their business analysts and through the application of their ISO9001 Quality Management System certification framework.
Regular audits are conducted to ensure the service continues to meet industry standards. The increase in back office processing requirements was addressed by adapting the operational and management structure from a traditional call center model to a hybrid call center/back office structure that maximizes efficiencies and ensures service levels are met.
The end-to-end solution now extends across:
- General enquiries
- Account establishment and management
- Contract and Exceptions management
- Billing enquiries and debt management
- Payment allocations
- Sales campaigns
- Customer surveys
The Result
Some highlights of Stellar's achievements during this partnership include:
- Expanding service 6 fold across new service types to meet growth and changing customer service requirements
- Rapid deployment of voice recording platform in 5 days from notification of trial to first recorded call
- Implementation of next-generation scanning and data capture technology to improve contract management, resulting in a saving of $100,000 per annum and significantly reducing data entry and error rates.
- Development of a comprehensive regulatory, operational and documented procedural framework in line with stringent industry regulations - successfully passed regulatory audit within 6 weeks of notification
- Adaptation to completely new billing, customer notes and market transfer system within 6 weeks
- Managing multiple campaigns across business and consumer markets; constantly delivering to both sales targets and quality KPIs
- Ability to scale and flex service to meet rapid sales ramp (in one period sales volumes increased 50% in the space of two months - Stellar maintained all service and quality target levels)
- Simplification of verification process resulted in saving 2 minutes per sale
- Developed functionality to enable real time communication between Stellar system and client’s CRM system
- Automated tracking numbers, enabling a paperless, more efficient process for the sales team while minimizing error rates and risks of duplication.
