Achieving sustainability in the cloud

Net zero transition

With leading numbers of solar parks, wind farms and thermal power plants, Eesti Energia (also known as Enefit) is well on its way from transforming from fossil fuels to becoming a renewable energy provider. By 2035, the goal is to offer affordable 100% carbon-free electricity to customers in Estonia and other markets like Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland.

To maximise the success of its net zero vision, the government-owned company recognised the need to consistently deliver exceptional service, which meant overhauling a sprawling, disconnected IT estate.

“Each country had its own contact centre with a mix of on-premises and cloud systems,” said Kaido Kabral, Customer Service Solution Expert at Eesti Energia. “So, a lot of time was taken up managing different products and vendor relationships. Also, because essential tools like reporting and call recording ran separately in a non-standard environment, it was hard to accurately plan and enforce service levels.”

Greener customer service

Eesti Energia wanted to standardise and improve both customer and employee experience. The company also wanted to drive greener contact centre operations — specifically by reducing its IT infrastructure and server footprint. The solution was Genesys Cloud.

“In consolidating all our contact centres on one Genesys platform, we created an environmentally friendly resource that countries could share to improve service and motivate advisors,” added Kabral. “Now, many are hybrid workers — lowering carbon dioxide through reduced power consumption and commuting to work. And we’ve retired at least five legacy systems, with more to follow.”

Government-certified security standards

Like many government organisations, Eesti Energia had security and data protection concerns in moving to the cloud. Genesys allayed such fears through extensive compliance certifications that promote the adoption of secure cloud services.

Trusted partner and contact centre specialist Adventus Solutions helped enable a flawless four-month migration. “Adventus ensured the solution was correctly set up and optimised to our exact needs,” said Kabral. “You need a good partner for contact centre projects. For example, they helped create data tables in Genesys to automate and standardise 88 call flows, eliminating the need for lots of manual configuration.”

Quick wins

Now, when customers call, they always experience efficient service, resulting in faster resolution for common issues such as billing queries, contract renewals, power issues and solar panel installations. Afterward, they receive a text message to participate in a short post-call survey.

“Results from our latest surveys suggest that customers feel well informed,” said Kabral. “They especially like our new callback service, which allows them to carry on with their day instead of having to stay on the phone.”

The Genesys platform also enables Eesti Energia to run highly efficient and effective outbound sales campaigns. Like many utility companies, it relies heavily on IVR messages to help reduce customer effort and the number of inbound calls, especially in the event of power outages or energy price changes. Now, with Genesys, text-to-speech messages are produced in minutes rather than hours or days.

Employees have noticed big changes, too. “Our team leaders have a common dashboard and set of metrics for tracking service levels across all our contact centres,” added Kabral. “And, unlike before when we could only see if an advisor was on or off queue, we’re able to measure KPIs like adherence rates and idle time.”

Advisors spend less time searching and entering data, thanks to handy features like screen pops, single sign-on and Genesys integration with Microsoft Dynamics.

Once they reach their personal targets, they become eligible to become hybrid workers. Most staff in Latvia work from home, while in Estonia the ability to offer hybrid working is enabling the company to access a larger talent pool and recruit across the entire country. That offer also extends to agents in Lithuania, subject to meeting performance targets.

Importantly, the company’s contact centres are more self-sufficient and require significantly less IT support. “We used to raise several tickets a day, compared to only a few in the four months since moving to Genesys,” said Kabral.

Innovation engine

Next, Eesti Energia intends to improve forecasting, training and quality management with the introduction of Genesys Workforce Engagement Management, which goes live shortly. Other plans include offering customers greater choice to communicate via web messaging, email and video calls. The company is also considering extending the Genesys platform to offer sales teams better call-handling tools than on their mobile phones.

“We set out to create reusable resources and make things easy — and that’s exactly what Genesys enables us to do,” concluded Kabral.