eGain a provider of multichannel customer service and knowledge management software, today announced that one of the energy companies in the UK has chosen eGain SelfService™. Scottish and Southern Energy Plc (SSE) will use eGain to further develop its customer service strategy, enabling customers to resolve queries through an online portal. Once implemented, eGain will help support the organisation’s growing customer base, further develop customer loyalty and lower overall support costs. SSE’s extended online presence and the introduction of new services such as e-billing has driven its organic growth, expanding its customer base from 4.5 million in 2004 to 8.5 million in 2007. In turn, the volume of customer enquiries has increased dramatically and SSE looked for additional methods of customer service to complement the telephone, e-mail and SMS options already available. John Evans, Senior Technical Architect at SSE comments: “We’ve experienced a steady but relentless growth in email volume; from 2,500 four years ago to 42,000 today. Having deployed eGain’s email management system in 2002, our customer service teams have been able to cope with this dramatic increase efficiently and effectively. However, we wanted to give our customers more options and further reduce the strain on our customer service team by introducing web self service technology. With the eGain Mail solution a proven success, it made sense to work with eGain to implement the next stage of our customer service strategy.” With a centralised knowledge base already in place with eGain Mail, eGain SelfService will enable SSE to offer its customers a new range of ways to access information in the common knowledge base including FAQs, search, browse, guided help and virtual agents. The software will provide SSE’s web customers with dynamic and intuitive service on the frontline, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Evans explains: “Our customer service agents currently have at least a 10-fold repetition with email enquiries. Encouraging more customer interaction through our website, the eGain self-service system can take away that repetition and free up our customer service staff to concentrate on more complex tasks. With the new web self service system, we are aiming for 20% email deflection. This will not only reduce support costs but shorten queues and improve the customer experience all round.” In addition, eGain’s self-monitoring feature automatically identifies knowledge bottlenecks through self-service usage analysis and user feedback, generating alerts and review tasks for appropriate content owners. The context-sensitive escalation provided by eGain SelfService will provide SSE with a continual record of each individual session, while escalating the interaction to an appropriate agent. In addition to the eGain SelfService, SSE is also upgrading its existing eGain Mail software to the latest version. The solution will be rolled out in SSE’s headquarters and its offices and is due to go live in July. Andrew Mennie, Vice President and General Manager, EMEA at eGain concludes, “In such a cost-competitive environment, customer service is a critical differentiator for utilities companies like SSE with such a wide spectrum of customer type and inquiry. Embracing the next generation of web customer service will provide the speed and accuracy of information that will enable them to reap cost benefits, increase customer retention and continue their growth as a business.”

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