All too often, call center people are not recognized by utility management enough as being the very front line of the company. CSRs also may need special skills to identify a customer's needs or preferences, says Stillings. It's almost being a little bit of a sleuth sometimes to investigate where the customer's needs are, and then to have both the knowledge and the skills at matching the consumer needs with the products and services. Adopting a marketing-oriented culture can be among the utility's greatest challenges in making this transition. That technology encompasses everything from the automatic call distributor to CRM software.
Many experts say yes.
The competition is Fed Ex. She says the bar has been raised by other service companies, and providing excellent service depends on having the right technology. Other experts say the answer depends on the energy company's business plan. They can do some things without it, and typically what you see is utilities kind of inch into it. Companies that take a staged-deployment approach to CRM may begin by instructing CSRs to notify all customers of a certain type about an offering that might be relevant to them.