National Grid Drastically Improved Customer Service — You Can Too!
Full-Service Outsourced Option
National Grid — one of the world's largest utility companies serving the United States and the United Kingdom — recently implemented Group 1's Co-Sourced e2™ Vault and e2™ Service solution, part of Group 1's Customer Communication Management (CCM) portfolio.
This high-performance archive is hosted in Group 1's premier data center.
Centralized Document Repository
Using the e2 solution to serve 3.3 million customers in New York and New England, National Grid centrally stores millions of documents
Online Document Retrieval
Both customers and call center customer service representatives (CSRs) immediate access to gas and electric service invoices — improving customer service and reducing costs.
As a growing utility company, potentially doubling the size of our U.S. business soon, we wanted to reduce call center costs and centrally manage customer information with an integrated archive, print, and electronic CCM solution.
Our cost savings were derived primarily from three areas: Legal, customer service, and print and mailing expenses. First, for our legal and audit departments, we needed a new archive system that could store up to six years of our commercial and industrial bills and two years of our residential bills as well as provide immediate access to these documents online. In the past, if we had to provide past bills for dispute resolution or legal litigation, we had to recreate them manually — that was a time-consuming and tedious process.
The second area of savings was customer service. Our CSRs also gain fast, immediate access to exact replica documents, providing efficient customer service and fast call resolution. Giving CSRs the ability to view the exact bill that the customer is seeing has definitely reduced our call center costs.
— Jeff Martin, Billing Director, National Grid U.S.
Secure and Reliable Archive
Group 1's e2 Vault provides real-time indexing, compression, storage, and retrieval of documents and data in their native format — delivering instant access to documents, regardless of their age or size.
It also gives CSRs and customers instant online access to customer data and documents and stores original, native-print documents to help businesses meet legal requirements.
Electronic Bill Payment and Presentment
National Grid realized further savings by enabling customers to view and pay their bills online.
To date, over 125,000 customers in New York alone have enrolled for the e-bill option, which reduces print and mail costs. This online billing option will be made available to National Grid's New England electric service customers later this year.
Our customers also appreciate that they can access up to two years of past bills from day one.
— Jeff Martin, Billing Director, National Grid U.S.
Read the Complete Success Story
Download the National Grid success story (PDF, 254 KB).