Westar Energy has partnered with InMoment, a cloud-based customer experience (CX) optimization platform that gives companies the ability to listen to and engage with customers. InMoment provides technology to power Westar's customer experience initiative.
Westar serves nearly 700,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers in eastern Kansas and has created a comprehensive customer experience program to put customers at the heart of every decision.
In early 2014, Westar kicked off this program by identifying each touchpoint along a customer's journey and assigning teams to evaluate ways to improve those experiences. Through this process, Westar has identified more than 199 different places where customers interact with the organization and will take steps to optimize each experience to achieve the best overall relationship. A company newsletter and blog keeps employees aware of how these efforts are progressing.
As part of the company’s customer experience initiative, Westar has vowed to get more feedback from more customers, more often. Westar will use the InMoment Experience Hub to gather customer stories and understand the insights using InMoment’s highly sophisticated text analytics technology. This information is then shared across the organization through a variety of alerts and reports, empowering employees to take the best actions to continue to improve the customer experience. As the program is rolled out on a larger scale, Westar plans to offer even more ways for customers to connect with the company, giving them the opportunity to share their stories whenever and however they choose.
“The utility industry has had some catching up to do – especially when it comes to how we interact with customers,” said Robin Seele, director, customer experience, Westar Energy. “Our goal is to give our customers every opportunity – from in-person, to the web, to mobile – to connect with us. In looking for a solution, we wanted a partner that was out-in-front from a technology perspective so they can help us move to the next level."