Hawaiian Electric Company Improves Customer Service with New Contact Center Solution

In a bid to improve its customer service, The Hawaiian Electric Company has implemented a contact center solution from Virtual Hold Technology (News - Alert), LLC (VHT) that includes virtual queuing technology.

 

The call center solution enhances the customer experience for financial services, energy, insurance, telecommunications, wireless and retail corporations.

 

The Hawaiian Electric Company Customer Assistance Center implemented the call center solution after receiving higher call volumes and longer hold times in the latter part of 2008.

 

According to Sylvia Chock, the director of Hawaiian Electric's customer account services division, the end of 2008 was difficult since the higher electricity costs brought more calls from customers wanting information about conservation and ways to manage their bills. The extra process steps also added time to each call. This resulted in call volume and lengths that were difficult for the customer representatives to manage.

 

Chock found out about the VHT solution during her own customer service experience with her cable company. She notes that the option of leaving a placeholder and receiving a call back when a cable company representative was available increased her satisfaction. It is this positive experience that led Chock to VHT and its virtual queuing solution. The Virtual Hold software will enable Hawaiian Electric customers to hang up the phone, maintain their place in the calling queue and receive a callback during periods of high call volume.

 

Hawaiian Electric has been able to improve its average speed to answer during peak call times by 70 percent in just three months. The number of calls that are abandoned and the need for customers to make repeat calls to customer service centers if they can't get through immediately have also been greatly reduced with the virtual queuing solution.

 

In addition to these benefits, the morale of employees has also improved through reduced frustration from customers who don't have to sit and wait on the phone until someone is available to assist them.

 

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