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Alinta Energy is an electricity generator and retailer that operates seven power plants in Australia and New Zealand. Its portfolio includes gas, wind, solar, coal and battery storage, servicing more than 1.1 million residential and business customers across Australia. To manage customer enquiries, Alinta has three Australian-based contact centres and a BPO in Manila. Together they employ more than 1000 staff.
Cindy Vandecasteele, General Manager Engagement at Alinta Energy, says the company recognised that it could better serve customers contacting its call centres with an omnichannel approach.
“With a move to renewable energy, our industry is transforming rapidly, and we want to make sure our customers can interact with us through a channel that suits them, whether that’s a website chat or app, via email, on the phone or social media.”
Alinta Energy’s previous contact centre platform was nearing end of life. As an on-premises environment managed by Datacom, it required regular upgrades. These periodically took the system offline, causing minor disruptions to its operations.
Alinta Energy embarked on a journey to re-engineer its business processes and contact centre technology solutions. This transformation included the migration to a new cloud-based platform, Genesys Cloud™ platform. In early 2023, from a field of five leading global technology providers, Alinta Energy selected Datacom as its implementation partner for the project.
“Alinta Energy and Datacom have worked together since 2009 and Datacom is very familiar with our requirements,” says Sayeed David, Senior Manager, Strategic Initiatives at Alinta Energy.
Datacom’s proposed solution empowered Alinta Energy to take control of its telephony and contact centre services. It involved moving away from reliance on hardware and services managed by Datacom to an evergreen and flexible cloud-based platform.
The Genesys Cloud solution that Datacom designed, configured, and deployed features a mix of out-of-the-box and bespoke functionality.
“It’s enhanced our ability to be nimble and agile. We now have the flexibility to partner with providers such as Twilio for the back-end telephony, an option that wasn’t available with the previous platform. This has provided better commercial outcomes and resulted in cost savings.”
Alinta Energy’s contact centre operations now enjoy a range of new features. These include speech/keyword analysis, flagging any detected issues. Transcription of every interaction, resulting in significant time savings and efficiency gains. ‘Level 2 Call Wrap’ codes, with the ability to assign a second-level wrap code to a completed call, have provided more granular insights into why customers are calling. This has helped Alinta better understand and address customer pain points and inform the digital channel roadmap. Integration of workforce management into the contact centre software has streamlined tasks like adding new queues and agent statuses, enhancing Alinta’s ability to meet challenges within the contact centre.
Despite a timeframe of just 18 weeks to complete the migration to Genesys Cloud, the transition went extremely smoothly.
During the six-week hyper care process, 800-plus Alinta staff across four locations were supported as they began using the new platform. Datacom trainers provided onsite and remote support as the system went live, helping to quickly resolve any issues. In the first four days, out of almost 10,000 calls taken, only 83 issues were reported.
“We’re delighted that the staff could immediately begin leveraging the benefits of the Genesys Cloud platform and that the customers are also enjoying improved service,” says Sayeed David. “The partnership between Alinta Energy and Datacom is an excellent example of a seamless migration experience from a hardware contact centre system to the Genesys cloud-based solution.”
While Alinta’s customers are benefitting from more efficient and convenient ways to contact the energy company, call centre staff are also happier. They describe Genesy Cloud as user-friendly, intuitive, and customisable, and are excited about phase two of the project, which will see the use of web messaging and SMS.
Since deployment of Genesys Cloud, Alinta Energy's call centre operations have realised improved key staff and service measures providing a solid base to support Alinta Energy’s continuous service strategy enhancements in customer experience and service.
Kevin Watts, Alinta Energy’s Head of Customer Service Excellence, says his team is continuing to strengthen platform employee engagement amongst customer-facing teams with a targeted change management strategy for future horizons leveraging on the engagement success of the foundational release.
This project has strengthened the existing partnership between Datacom and Alinta Energy and both teams are looking forward to seeing what they can achieve together in the future.
Stacey Tomasoni, Managing Director at Datacom, says the organisation is thrilled to be partnering with Alinta Energy over the next two years.
“Genesys Cloud is a powerful platform that enables us to solve a diverse range of rapidly evolving problems, exceeding customer expectations,” she says. “We are equally excited about the possibilities we have mapped out together that will enhance support for the Alinta Energy team in their continuous pursuit of exceptional experiences.”
