Utility companies

The provision of Water, Gas and Electricity is amongst the most important services for the population at large, and consequently it is imperative to be able to communicate with all customers as clearly as possible. This is true across a wide range of contexts, from dialogues related to bills and payments, to reporting faulty equipment and informing the utility about emergency situations that are sometimes life threatening. Clear communication with customers is required in many situations, including where they are:

• Telephoning to question invoices and making payments,
• Telephoning to make an appointment with a local manager,
• Visiting the local office,
• Visiting the local showroom,
• Engaging with engineers at one’s home or business.

The nature of the business of the Utility company means that it is inevitable that its engineers and staff need to communicate with its customers in ethnic minority communities from time to time.

Lattice Voice applications enable multilingual communications between company staff and customers in all these contexts – on the telephone, in the office and on the street. Scripted dialogues are designed to ensure that legal, commercial and service issues are carefully and clearly embedded into these multilingual communications with customers. Through these dialogues the company can improve its internal efficiencies and at the same time increase the level of satisfaction with its non-English speaking customers. For example, a customer calling to make an appointment with a local business manager to discuss an outstanding service issue, can not only communicate with a receptionist each in their own first language, but also do so according to the best practice that has been set down by the company. Similarly, when such a customer is visiting the local showroom, with the aspiration to purchase a new cooker or refrigerator or solar heating system or to renew a finance agreement, the sales executive can communicate in the language of the customer, and also be sure to follow the company’s best practice model – including the latest offers and cross-selling opportunities as relevant at the time.

The multilingual communications enabled by the Lattice Voice applications, are particularly useful in the context of engineers meeting customers in the street, at home or at their business premises. In these circumstances, using Lattice on mobile devices, company staff can communicate important information about the job to the customer, ensure that the customer is fully aware of the work to be done and the resulting consequences. Providing such dialogues in the first language of both engineer and customer ensures clear communication between them, resulting in improvements both to corporate business processes and customer satisfaction.