As part of our Keeping Us Connected campaign, Utility Week looks at how EDF Energy’s telephony team has been working to ensure the company can continue to help the most vulnerable customers at a time when they need it most.
Despite being one of the UK’s largest energy suppliers, EDF Energy is not immune to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The virus has brought many logistical challenges for the supplier, one of which being how it could mobilise its customer service employees to work from home in a short space of time.
EDF’s telephony channel team played a fundamental part in achieving this and were able to respond rapidly to the situation, mobilising the majority of its workforce to operate from home in just five days.
Over the past 12 months, the team has helped to roll out a cloud-based contact centre telephony system upgrade which made the transition to home working in such a short space of time possible. In addition, the telephony team has supported the business by call routing and setting up home working helpdesks.
EDF says the support has meant that during the pandemic it has been able to ensure the health and well-being of its employees, while also continuing to be able to support its most vulnerable customers.
Gary Pink, telephony channels development manager, said: “Over the last year, we’ve played a key part in the delivery of our new cloud-based contact centre telephony system. We knew that it would give us the increased flexibility to meet our ever changing needs and it really came into its own with the onset of the pandemic.
“Despite the various virtual logistical challenges, we pulled out all of the stops, supporting mobilisation efforts to enable home working for our colleagues to be there for our customers.”
Niels Roberts, digital automation and process excellence director, said: “EDF’s telephony channel team have been instrumental in ensuring that EDF has continued to be there for our customers and also our employees throughout Covid-19.
“The team worked tirelessly, using their expert knowledge of our telephony platform and business to innovatively enable the majority of our customer service advisors to work from their homes answering our customers calls – and they did all of this in less than one week.
“I cannot praise the team highly enough, their professionalism, dedication and passion has embodied the spirit in which we have sought to respond to the pandemic and support our employees and customers.”
Keeping Us Connected is a new series from Utility Week in which we highlight the achievements of employees across the utilities sector in getting the UK through lockdown. To nominate a member of your team for recognition, please email jameswallin@fav-house.com.