Lithys 2017: AGL Energy Ltd - Digital CX All-Star

Lithys 2017: AGL Energy Ltd - Digital CX All-Star

AGL has a huge focus on digital. The business is currently undertaking a $300M AUD Customer Experience Transformation program. We’re looking at how we shape the experience for our customers at every point of interaction with AGL.  

 

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Company: AGL Energy Ltdlogo.png

Entry submitted by: Liam Woods (Digital Community Channel Manager)

Community/Social Channels:

https://community.agl.com.au

www.facebook.com/aglenergy

www.twitter.com/aglenergy

www.instagram.com/aglenergy

https://www.youtube.com/user/aglenergy

https://www.linkedin.com/company/agl

Lithy category:  Digital CX All-Star

 

AGL is one of Australia’s leading integrated energy companies. It is taking action to responsibly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions while providing secure and affordable energy to its customers. Drawing on over 175 years of experience, AGL serves its customers throughout eastern Australia with meeting their energy requirements, including gas, electricity, solar PV and related products and services. AGL has a diverse power generation portfolio including base, peaking and intermediate generation plants, spread across traditional thermal generation as well as renewable sources including hydro, wind, solar, landfill gas and biomass.

 

AGL: Digital Customer Experience

AGL has a huge focus on digital. The business is currently undertaking a $300M AUD Customer Experience Transformation program. We’re looking at how we shape the experience for our customers at every point of interaction with AGL. Our goal is to transform the way customers interact with us--especially in digital channels--into a positive experience. At the end of the day, if our customers can contact us when and where they want to and have a good experience, it will only be positive for the business.

 

Whilst we are mid-way through the program at the moment and are still yet to deliver the bulk of the value, we have implemented a number of technology-focused initiatives for our customers that emphasise CX including:

  • a revamped, modern website progressively rolling out in 2017
  • We reimagined our online account management system, building a simple to use platform that has resonated tremendously well with our customers – we are recording positive NPS for the payments flow feature
  • an experience-led design language system governing the way we design digital assets for our customers, along with a complete rebranding of the company
  • A mobile app to help our customers manage their energy usage anywhere and anytime – the only one of its kind among any energy retailer in Australia
  • An online Lithium Community that is the first port of call for our customers to get help for the questions that are important to them – infused in to the overall customer experience to make it a seamless part of the user’s journey
  • A scaled support model delivering timely and efficient service for our customers no matter the channel they choose to contact us in – phone, email, webchat or social media

Benefits of having both a community and a social media management platform

Having both Community and SMM from Lithium has been really great for AGL. We know customers increasingly want to interact with us digitally, and one of the ways we’ve responded to this has been to infuse the Community as a key channel throughout the many points of contact our customers have with us. We know that by doing this, our customers will have a better experience and AGL will receive tangible business outcomes and value.

 

In addition to other methods, perhaps the strategic initiative we’re most proud of is our use of Lithium’s REST API to really leverage the Community as a support tool for the business. We have created a customised, contextually relevant FAQ tool which we have inserted on 50 pages on the AGL website, enabling our customers to seek additional assistance at the perfect time – when the content we host on our domain is not enough, and right before they call our contact centre. Through initiatives such as these, we have seen our customers begin to self-serve on their own without prompting, which was fantastic to see.

 

In addition to this, we recently redesigned our Community’s IA to ensure that it conforms to the redesigned agl.com.au website. As a result, we are seeing a lower bounce rate and higher engagement as customers can make the connection between the Community and AGL’s digital brand. We also added a new single sign on capability in April 2017 which will link to other key AGL digital assets very soon, providing a brilliant experience.

 

Our Social Media Management tool has also improved our experience by ensuring that customers get personalised support within 1 hour of first contact, regardless of the channel they use. We manage this at scale across 3 different countries, and the customers are loving it.

 

The results

  1. Community has delivered $1,246,274 in business value to date in the 2016-17 financial year. This is comprised of:
    • $634,797 in cost savings through support deflections
    • $611,477 in attributed sales or revenue
  2. Approximately 8,000 support deflections per month
  3. Using only the Community business value metrics (and not taking in to account any value gained from the SMM platform), we are currently sitting at an annualised return on investment of over 106% for the entire investment in Lithium Technology tools.
  4. Consistent CSAT >85% via our social channels, managed by Lithium SMM
  5. 72% of all inquiries lodged through social media channels are responded to within an hour.
  6. 29% improvement in agent first response times year-on-year
  7. Over 3,000 social interactions per month
  8. >50% of all conversations shift from a negative or neutral sentiment to positive
  9. Visits to Community have increased 110% year-on-year
  10. 55% increase in mobile visits year-on-year
  11. Through optimization and technical improvements, bounce rate within Community has decreased 61% year-on-year

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