A Client Success Story: Leveraging Teleservices to Humanize the Customer Experience
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizational leaders must adapt their strategies, business models, and digital capabilities to better compete. A recent Forrester report cites the need for organizations to focus on customer outcomes and empathy. Times of change and uncertainty can change the perception of companies. Were they by my side when my business struggled? Can I count on them when a crisis occurs? Companies that are able to focus on empathizing with their customers, working side by side with them to help solve potential problems, and delivering meaningful outcomes will create customer relationships that can never be broken.
When client PG&E noticed a steady decline in conversion rates across a number of campaign programs and initiatives, they quickly realized the need to assess existing weaknesses, revamp current strategies, and develop new, innovative approaches to turn fading campaigns around for attaining their goals.
As one of the largest combined natural gas and electric energy companies in the United States, providing service to approximately 16 million people throughout a 70,000-square-mile service area in northern and central California, this was no easy feat.
After careful discovery and analysis, R2i proposed elevating current highly targeted emails and direct mail communication with their personalized Teleservices solution for driving enrollment, educational, transactional, and customer experience objectives with key stakeholders. .
However, concern around direct outreach to target customers during a worldwide pandemic arose. All the worse - facing this new challenge amidst rampant statewide woodland fire devastation and an overall widespread climate of uncertainty across its customer base, PG&E was hesitant on continuing with the R2i's Teleservices offering.
Doubling down in trust with R2i, a new, enhanced framework was erected, enabling PG&E to offer personalized, 1:1 outbound call streamlining efforts. Not only did the revamped structure drive added action from purchasers; i.e. booking appointments with sales representatives, encouraging personal inquiries for additional information, opting into digital communications and the like, but it furthermore propelled optimization of campaign performance of those that did not previously have teleservices enabled.
THE IMPACT
The revamped efforts saw immense success. PG&E and R2i’s pilot of 14 campaigns quickly grew to 30+ initiatives. Through personalized scripting and multi-language calling capabilities, the added personalization layer propelled the relationship of not only PG&E and each of its consumers, but also the utility's rapport and trust with R2i.
Paired with PG&E’s investments in data & analytics, R2i could then analyze the customer data and derive marketing insights, directional authority and real-time recommendations on content, cadence, channel, creative, and messaging in order to influence customer behavior, and ultimately identify audience intention for helping to shape its new strategy. This combination of data insights and technology enabled R2i & PG&E to not only reach, but also connect with customers in ways that had not previously been executed within PG&E, or the competing utility companies within the industry.
In tandem, R2i and PG&E worked to collaboratively build a ‘Tele-Agency of Record,’ sanctioning transparency into holistic views of all campaigns in order to ensure teams were trained across a variety of product offerings, furthering the ability to suggest personalized solutions and products for each unique customer.
This combination of analytics, strategy and teleservices produced an enriched customer experience beyond email alone during a challenging and trying period of virtual engagement. Not only did the constructed strategies increase program enrollment, but they additionally generated automated processes that continue to inform timely data analysis from an ongoing perspective.
In 2020 alone, R2i has updated 20,000+ records on behalf of PG&E with only a mere 27 opting out of communication (0.13%), given in a 49% connectivity rate with 36% voicemail rate.
To date, consumer accounts continue to prove outstandingly favorable to the personal outreach from PG&E in the midst of national, worldwide change. By supplementing the preexisting digital and direct mail campaigns, PG&E truly humanized experiences for customers and prospects while engaging with an entity that is often be perceived to be machine-driven.
Want to learn how R2i’s Teleservices solution can accelerate your strategies for maximizing your potential for impactful results? Contact us today!
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