Stredoslovenská energetika reached a point where it needed to take its contact center to the next level. Several challenges lay ahead – a new call center system, integration with the internal CRM system, and their seamless interconnection. Read on to discover how we integrated innovations together and enhanced the efficiency of the contact center.
About Stredoslovenská energetika
Stredoslovenská energetika is the second-largest electricity supplier in the Slovak market, holding a 25% market share. It builds on over 100 years of experience and tradition. The company serves more than 735,000 customers, including households, businesses, municipalities, as well as large-scale electricity and natural gas consumers. Its customer service hotline handles over 300,000 inquiries annually.
Stredoslovenská energetika's Request
In 2011, SSE launched a tender for a new contact center system. The requirement was clear – to cover all call center operations, which in practice meant telephony, email communication with customers, and reporting.
The contact center was expected not only to make agents’ work easier but also to be fully integrated with internal systems that could communicate seamlessly with one another.
How We Solved It at Alcasys:
Stredoslovenská energetika needed a flexible system that excelled in voice communication and email routing. At the same time, it had to be stable, feature-rich, offer an open interface, and provide excellent reporting capabilities.
We recognized that the contact center industry is constantly evolving. Therefore, the solution also needed to adapt to trends in communication channels, such as chat, voicebots, and more.
At Alcasys, we had the perfect key product available – Genesys Engage. Our task was to design how it would integrate with SSE’s internal CRM system.
One of the major advantages of the system is its adaptability. As a Genesys partner, we can tailor the system and adjust its settings according to our customer’s needs.
With the rise of social media, automation, and artificial intelligence, companies with contact centers have an opportunity to leverage new forms of communication. However, this also comes with challenges. Implementing a new communication channel—such as chat—can be problematic if the existing contact center system is not ready for the change. This is a common issue for many companies. Fortunately, we provided SSE with a system that handled this transition with ease.
About Genesys Engage
System Reliability
The Genesys Engage system is built on multiple components, and since its vendor is the multinational company Genesys, we deliver it with stable support. Comprehensive documentation and a strong technological foundation are a given.
Zero Downtime
Genesys Engage utilizes standard databases and operating systems from Microsoft, Linux, and Oracle. Thanks to this, we can develop and support high-availability solutions with no downtime. We confidently guarantee an SLA of 99%, meaning that when calculated on a yearly basis, any potential downtime amounts to just a few minutes.
Fast Customization
With its easy and fast adaptability, the system allows for customizing the agent's user interface. If an agent team decides they need a color scheme change or an additional button that wasn’t originally part of the interface, it’s not a problem. Moreover, these changes don’t require months of waiting—they can be implemented within just a few days.
Adding Chat and Other Communication Channels:
The evolution and accessibility of technology, along with changes in communication habits, have significantly influenced how people want to interact with service providers.
Around 10 years ago, chat windows started appearing on websites, enabling real-time text-based communication. As a technology leader, Genesys supported this functionality from the very beginning.
SSE also wanted to enhance customer interaction by adding a chat option.
✔️ First, we demonstrated how this communication could work. We created a test environment where the company could experience the chat process firsthand. After testing, we collected feedback to improve features and implemented the necessary enhancements.
✔️ For example, we added a field for the customer's email address, allowing chat transcripts to be sent after the conversation.
✔️ We also introduced a contract number field, enabling agents to quickly and easily identify customers.
✔️ Finally, the functionality was deployed into production. The integration of this new communication channel was completed within a month and a half.
Integration with Internal CRM:
- Stredoslovenská energetika used different CRM systems for each of its business divisions, knowing that one day they would transition under a single holding company and unify their systems. To accommodate this, we created two separate call center units, each seamlessly integrated with its respective CRM.
- The result? The entire call center can be efficiently managed via CRM, ensuring no mixed or distorted data. Agents simply open the system, connect via a button, and handle calls directly within the CRM, which provides a comprehensive overview of the caller’s details.
- Basic information—such as whether the interaction was an incoming or outgoing call or an email inquiry, the type of request, and whether it has been resolved—is automatically recorded in the internal database.
- For call center agents, this means less manual input into the CRM. The fact that a customer interaction took place is logged into the system with a single click through Genesys integration.
- Beyond basic data, the Genesys solution also transfers the entire content of email communications into the CRM system. This allows SSE call center agents to review and assess customer interactions, email content, and agent responses in one centralized place.
Petra Turzová, Head of Support at SSE:
"The integration of the call center into the CRM system makes our work easier and faster. Without this connection, agents would have to manually record each inquiry."
Ticketing
Having the ability to communicate with customers via email without an efficient ticketing system is a missed opportunity—one that, over time, costs you energy, resources, and money.
We emphasize to all contact centers working with email that implementing a ticketing system is essential. Drawing from challenges observed in other projects, we decided to enhance Genesys Engage by integrating a ticketing system for SSE. This system assigns a unique code to each interaction, ensuring better tracking and management of customer communication.
What Does Ticketing Bring to Call Centers?
✔️Greater control over email processing.
✔️ Clarity even in cases of duplicate requests.
✔️ Efficient task distribution and assignment.
✔️ Enhanced customer experience.
Call Back Option
We also integrated the option to call customers back after a certain period. If a caller had been waiting on the line for an extended time, the system notified them that by pressing "1," they could enter the call-back queue, and the next available agent would contact them.
Benefits: This solution helped reduce peak-time congestion and optimize time slots when call center agents had fewer customer inquiries.
Reporting
With the newly integrated system, SSE gained valuable data that provided insights into request volumes. Additionally, they could track not only how many people were calling, but also what types of requests were being handled by the call center.
We integrated a system feature that allows each inquiry to be tagged with a specific category. Agents adjusted their record-keeping process and began labeling the reason for contact.
This improved system visibility enhanced the overall efficiency of the contact center's operations. Agents also gained the ability to view the full history of customer interactions.
Petra Turzová, Head of Support at SSE:
"On a daily basis, supervisors evaluate how many tickets are being processed or remain untouched, allowing them to plan how many agents need to handle ticket requests on a given day."
What Types of Data Can Be Extracted from Reports:
Agent Performance
- Total working hours of an agent
- Number of tasks completed
- Types of tasks handled during the shift
- Time required to complete a specific task
- Average customer interaction duration
- Average After-Call Work (ACW) time – the functional pause after a call that allows the agent to finalize the interaction
- Ring duration before the call is answered
Call Line Utilization
- Number of customers who successfully connected
- Types of inquiries customers are calling about
- Number of calls answered by agents
- Number of unanswered calls
- Number of customers added to the call-back list and whether they were successfully contacted
- Number of customers served within 20-40 seconds
Pure Availability
Some customers call 2-3 times per week, which is why it is beneficial to track how many customers called only once. This approach helps minimize statistical distortions and provides a more accurate picture of customer interactions.
Types of Requests at Both Ticket and Call Levels
The call center system offers a two-level hierarchy of categories that can be used for reporting. Agents always tag the type of request a customer has and assign it to the appropriate category.
For structured ticket requests coming from SSE’s eZone, the process is partially automated, allowing customers to select their request category directly within the eZone system.
Email Statistics
For email inquiries, the system tracks how many remain unresolved. This ensures that email communication is not overlooked and that customer requests are handled in a timely manner. Reporting plays a crucial role in optimizing this process.
Petra Turzová, Head of Support at SSE:
"We work with Genesys statistics daily to plan shifts—not just the number of calls per day, but also on an hourly basis. Thanks to this data, our colleague responsible for shift planning can determine how many agents are needed and on which days to ensure efficient call handling."
Integration with Staffino:
In addition to reporting on the performance and efficiency of the contact center and its agents, companies also need insights into customer satisfaction. However, obtaining unbiased feedback can be challenging.
To address this, we partnered with Staffino, a company that operates an online platform for measuring customer experience and satisfaction. Staffino collects feedback in an engaging way, identifies customer issues and their root causes, and helps find solutions. It focuses on process improvement and leveraging customer experience to enhance performance and revenue.
In practice, it works simply. After a customer interacts with the call center, a ticket is created. Our system then forwards this ticket to Staffino. Based on an algorithm and collected data, Staffino determines whether to contact the customer and through which channel—email or SMS. The customer then rates their satisfaction with the call center in the Staffino platform.
The evaluation results are then sent back to us. If the feedback is negative, the system records it and assigns it to the specific call and agent, allowing the supervisor to review the agent’s performance. If the feedback is positive, the system sends the information to the contact center application, making it visible to the agent, providing motivation through direct feedback.
Petra Turzová, Head of Support at SSE:
"The ability to automate selected processes with the Genesys solution has made our work significantly easier. We save human resources and can handle more customer requests. The team at Alcasys is friendly, warm, and above all, helpful. I can see that they genuinely care about their customers and strive to maintain strong relationships. This is evident in the fact that even if I were to call any of them at 7 PM, they would willingly assist me and provide advice."
