What a Web Portal can do for your Natural Gas Business
In the competitive Natural Gas industry, where marketers are readily substitutable, customer service and support quality can be the difference between retaining or losing hard-won customers. Likewise, for Natural Gas businesses that rely on Brokers for new customer identification and acquisition, ensuring Brokers have the information they need and are motivated are critical success factors to Broker performance. Additionally, LDCs require the ability to provide marketers and customers with the option of self-service data inquiry and on-demand reporting. The challenge is supplying Customers, Brokers and Marketers with the information they require without having to staff an increasing number of telephone and email-based customer service personnel.
Now parallel this with mainstream and hotly contested consumer businesses; anything in the Financial Services sector, for example. Web Portals abound – they are an expected, even demanded self-service feature. As such, they are standard functionality, available via both PCs and mobile applications. So, what is the difference for a Natural Gas business; one that faces competition from dozens of others in the same markets? Across all our Marketer and LDC interactions, I can tell you that the difference lies predominantly in the size of the business – larger Natural Gas businesses recognize the importance of customer self-service and the bottom-line benefit of reducing the amount of telephone-based customer service personnel required to supply routine information or answer mundane questions, information that is easily presented 24/7 via a Web Portal.
Here is what Natural Gas business leaders tell us a Web Portal enables:
- Superior customer experience via 24/7 self-service access to routinely requested information
- Increased Broker motivation and performance via 24/7 self-service access to top-of-mind information
- Reduction in inbound telephone inquiries and associated staffing costs to support
- Customers, Brokers and Marketers can nominate volumes as and when desired
- Increased customer and broker loyalty
- Competitive advantage
The good news for Natural Gas businesses of all sizes is that Web Portal functionality specifically designed for Natural Gas exists and can be stood up as a standalone solution, alongside existing infrastructure. It is easily implemented, configurable with company-specific branding, serving data according to individual company preferences, manageable by the business and affordable – certain to defray the cost of additional customer service headcount, while delivering a superior customer experience. So, what are you waiting for …?
Distributors, End Users, LDCs, Marketers, Pipelines, Producers, and Utilities face increasing competitive and compliance pressures, requiring increased operational efficiency, data integrity and process improvement. Their operational systems must support this, but most do not. Engage us and we will show you how to make a breakthrough. It’s what we do for natural gas companies, and we are experts in our field.
~ Ken
