E.ON powers up its customer service

Citation

(2012), "E.ON powers up its customer service", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 44 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2012.03744daa.001

E.ON powers up its customer service

Article Type: Notes and news From: Industrial and Commercial Training, Volume 44, Issue 4

E.ON UK Business Services had scored poorly for the service it gave its internal customers, but training has now transformed the internal shared-services culture.

E.ON UK Business Services delivers personnel, facilities, accounting and engineering training to E.ON UK’s 17,000 employees, who in turn support 5.5 million customers in the UK.

The power giant recognized that keeping its internal customers happy would help to provide the platform to keep external customers happy, and therefore loyal, in a competitive market.

The E.ON UK Business Services customer-experience team worked with training provider Bluestarfish Consulting to identify areas of weakness in its customer service. Together they found that internal E.ON UK customers have no choice but to use the department’s services, which can lead to complaints and a lack of co-operation.

Internal users were not happy with the soft skills they were receiving from customer-facing colleagues, and gave big negative scores to human-resources, facilities, accounting and engineering training. Meanwhile, E.ON UK was moving towards open competition for internal services across Europe, which posed an opportunity and a threat.

In response, Bluestarfish Consulting delivered a program named Customer Brilliance, to change the culture in E.ON UK Business Services and improve customer service. The training won a UK National Training Award.

Bluestarfish selected 357 employees to attend the course from all levels, including external contractors, security guards, and maintenance and kitchen teams. The content of the course was designed around areas identified as poor, including communication skills, taking ownership, understanding and meeting customer needs and handling conflict.

The training was pragmatic and engaging, to cater for colleagues who were not accustomed to formal learning. It used actors, neuro-linguistic programming-adapted exercises and experiential learning.

One trainee commented: “The actors took the fear out of role-playing. It made me relax and learn more.”

The training also made use of bespoke scripts for each area of the bureau, with Bluestarfish working closely with employees before designing them. Another trainee noted: “I had that customer yesterday. How did they know that?”

The price per employee of the training was £197, and the business planned to cover the time away from the workplace to avoid impact on internal customers. In addition, HR went through a major change in information technology during the training, with employees successfully adapting.

Behavioral changes took place in all areas of E.ON UK Business Services, with customer satisfaction scores improving month on month. Comments from managers indicated that they had learned to look at issues from a customer perspective, take more responsibility and provide a better service. Customer comments reflected this, and commended E.ON UK Business Services on its fast, efficient and friendly service.

Rosie Routledge, E.ON UK customer-engagement manager, said: “A penny dropped for us in E.ON UK Business Services. While our customers could not walk away, we had not paid enough attention to customer experience in a potentially competitive market. But our monopoly was ending, and we needed to ensure future growth by transforming our culture from process-driven to customer-centric. It sounds simple, but we needed to understand and change our culture quickly.

“Customers’ net-promoter-score feedback highlights what a success the program has been. Without fail, the feedback shows that the customer-service skills of Customer Brilliance-trained areas are second to none.”