Getting to Why: How Superior Propane Increased Customer Retention by Extinguishing Contact Centre Process Challenges

With interaction volumes and customer expectations concurrently exploding, the efficiency and effectiveness of a contact centre’s processes can mean either delight or doom for downstream customer satisfaction ratings.

It’s why Canada’s largest propane supplier since 1951—Superior Propane—continually reviews and improves the operational processes used by its contact centres. And, when they spot areas that could benefit from improvement, they act fast.

That’s exactly what happened when the Superior Propane contact centres that process customer calls, emails, faxes, and inquiries from the “mySUPERIOR^TM” web portal wanted to increase customer retention and reduce average handle times (AHT): they activated Calabrio Analytics to gain an in-depth understanding of how current processes impacted the customer experience.

What they discovered were ripe opportunities to increase agent empowerment, improve several key processes and up-level agent training. And that’s exactly what they did.

For example:

• An updated and streamlined interactive voice response (IVR) system allows callers wanting to cancel their service more quickly reach the highly trained, more empowered Customer Care agents authorized to negotiate with them.
• If a delivery will be missed, agents now can proactively notify customers much earlier in the day.
• To streamline the customer experience and maintain historical context and continuity, repeat callers connect with the same agent each time they call.
• Agents can begin filling out new log templates as soon as they connect with a customer.
• A new, peer-to-peer model positions agents to work alongside each other, so they can more readily share tips and insights.
• Both new hires and existing agents are taught proven ways to increase their productivity.

Improvements like these resulted in immediate, tangible business value for Superior Propane, which is why we named it one of the winners in Calabrio’s inaugural Analytics Awards competition held in late 2019.

For instance, the company’s front line staff dramatically improved its first contact resolution (FCR) within only three months after implementing the changes. And new-hire AHTs meet the required AHT within only weeks now, as opposed to the months of time it took before.

“Reducing our AHT by just 30 seconds per call means we can take 150 more customer inquiries on a daily basis with the same size team, therefore improving our customer experience,” says Alex Wozniak, director of customer experience for Superior Propane.

So how did they do it? Alex credits Calabrio’s desktop and speech analytics capabilities for helping Superior Propane quickly and deeply understand how its current processes impacted their customer experience.

Calabrio Desktop & Speech Analytics: Improving Processes for a Better Customer Experience

Using Calabrio’s desktop analytics, Superior Propane dug into its AHT and quickly found three areas for improvement:

• Agents were required to use labour-intensive call log templates, so they usually completed the logs after ending the calls instead of completing them during the calls as intended.
• Agents sometimes completed after-call work instead of tending to higher-priority tasks.
• Some agents used systems or tools that impeded their productivity.

Then, using Calabrio’s speech analytics, Superior Propane identified key terms at-risk customers use, terms like “I’m switching suppliers” or “propane prices.” And then they identified ways to intervene with these customers, better retain them, and take the customer experiences from good to great.

What Superior Propane did is an excellent example of the additional insight to be gained by pairing desktop analytics with speech analytics. And it’s definitely award-worthy.

Congratulations, Superior Propane!

Find out exactly how Superior Propane took action upon the findings from Calabrio Analytics in order to improve customer retention and better empower its agents. Read the “3 Award-Winning Workforce Optimisation (WFO) Analytics Success Stories” Ebook.

Angela Higgins

Angela Higgins, Director of Customer & Partner Engagement, is responsible for creating meaningful experiences through which customers and partners can engage with Calabrio and its products. Angela joined Calabrio with more than 15 years’ experience in marketing, including 8 years in B2B software marketing. She holds a B.A. in public relations from University of Minnesota, and a Master’s in Business Communications from St. Thomas University.