Certa: Using SMS to reduce waiting times

Challenge

Certa is one of Ireland’s largest home heating and fuel providers, servicing homes, businesses and vehicles around the country.

December is always the busiest month of the year for home heating. After 2 very mild months, a cold snap came in December and saw a sudden surge in demand. With this increase in call volumes, the contact center saw an inevitable increase in their call waiting times, and with customers waiting to connect, Certa wanted to ensure that these customers were able to place an order quickly and efficiently without impacting on their customer experience.

Certa wanted to ensure that customers were looked after and able to top up their tanks before the cold snap set in.

Solution

The sudden increase in demand for home heating caused a surge of calls into the contact center, leading to a risk of missing out on customer orders. Certa wanted to ensure their customers who were waiting to speak to someone had an option to receive a text message to complete their order online.

Púca teamed up with systems integrator TeamTalk and voice solutions provider IP Telecom to deliver an IVR to SMS call deflection mechanic for the Certa contact centre. The IVR was able to detect queued calls from mobiles, filter those that were waiting to pay, and send these customers an SMS using the Púca Impower™ API with a link to the online payments system.

Results

As a result, Certa reduced dropped calls by 15% and increased online sales by 8%. Seán McGeown, Certa’s Head of Domestic and Small Commercial Sales commented;

“The IVR to SMS mechanic worked brilliantly. It allowed us to turn dropped calls into sales and solve the problem of call surges during our busiest times. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Púca to anyone looking to do automated SMS.”

Seán McGeown, Certa

“Call deflection can work so well when it presents a simpler and faster alternative to the customer. We are so pleased to be able to support this great use case with Certa”.

Eileen Carroll, Púca CEO