ENGIE Residential Customers Can Now Contact Their Energy Company via WhatsApp
The first European Utility Company active on WhatsApp through Sparkcentral and a first mover to enhance customer experiences with consumer messaging apps
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 17, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The largest energy supplier on the Belgian market, ENGIE, a subsidiary of global energy leader ENGIE Group, is pleased to announce that its 2 million retail customers can now contact their energy company via WhatsApp. By enabling WhatsApp as a new customer engagement channel, Engie is clearly at the European forefront of driving innovation in its customer service operations.
"Innovation is at the heart of our business," said Philippe Van Troeye, CEO of ENGIE BENELUX. "In this respect, digitalization is a real accelerator for innovation and makes life easier for our 2 million customers and it brings us even closer together. The adoption of WhatsApp for customer engagement is clearly in line with this ambition."
For several years now, Engie has recognized that the growing group of digital-savvy energy consumers expect modern and convenient ways to engage with their energy supplier. When customers have a question or want to purchase a product or service of Engie, being easily accessible on the digital channels customers prefer is key. In this regard, Engie entered into an innovation partnership with Sparkcentral, a leading global provider of messaging customer service software, in 2017, when Engie launched its customer care on social media platforms Twitter and Facebook. Earlier this year, Engie also started replacing its live chat capabilities with an asynchronous web messaging solution from Sparkcentral.
Christoph Neut, VP EMEA at Sparkcentral said: "Following the rise of consumers using Social Media for customer service in the last 5 years, we are now entering a new era of consumer to business communication. In our daily lives we have all massively adopted messaging apps as a dominant way to engage with family, friends and colleagues. The modern digital consumer now expects to engage in the same convenient way with the companies they do business with. Engie has been an early believer of this trend and is now clearly a frontrunner in their industry."
Earlier this year global analyst firm Gartner stated: "We predict that, by 2019, consumer messaging apps will be a preferred means for customers to connect with businesses as compared to social media," (Gartner, Hype Cycle for CRM Customer Service and Customer Engagement, July 2018). In another report from this year, Gartner predicts that: "By 2022, 70% of customer interactions will involve an emerging technology such as machine learning applications, chatbots or mobile messaging, up from 15% in 2018…"Though the proportion of phone-based communication will drop to just over 10% of overall customer service interactions by 2022, a human agent will still be involved in more than 40% of all interactions (Gartner, Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center, May 2018). We feel these predictions clearly demonstrate that companies need to be prepared for a massive influx of messages in the years to come."
Based on the first 3 days of data that Sparkcentral captured since the launch of the new WhatsApp channel, the Gartner predictions are already being confirmed. With currently more than 3.300 messages received daily at Engie the channel preference of their customers is as follows:
The Available Messaging Channel - the Channel preference of ENGIE customers
Twitter - 1%
Facebook - 1%
Facebook Messenger - 26%
Whatsapp - 33%
Web Messaging (asynchronous Live Chat) - 39%
The fast adoption of communication with ENGIE customer service via WhatsApp clearly demonstrates that the newly released channel offers many advantages to its customers: they can communicate anywhere, anytime, from their favorite mobile App without waiting on an IVR; while they can interrupt and resume communication at their own convenience, and share documents or photos directly. The company expects the WhatsApp channel to grow rapidly, due to its secure and private nature, its utmost convenience, its wide adoption and the ease of use for young and old.
To engage with ENGIE via WhatsApp, simply follow this link: wa.me/32460222585
Or you can use the QR and start your conversation with ENGIE directly from WhatsApp.
About ENGIE
ENGIE is the largest energy supplier on the Belgian market, where it's active in electricity generation, sales of electricity and natural gas and energy services. The company offers value-added energy solutions, as well as tailored services to its 2 million residential, professional, and industrial customers. ENGIE has a diversified production base of 9,529 MW in Belgium, close to its customers. It consists of facilities that operate from renewable sources, conventional and nuclear power plants. ENGIE generation facilities are one of the lowest emitters of CO2 in Europe. The company is Belgium's largest producer of green energy with a total capacity of 647 MW in renewable energy.
About Sparkcentral
Based in San Francisco, California, and Hasselt, Belgium, Sparkcentral is a messaging customer service platform company with a mission to change the way customer service is delivered around the world. The company wants to spark a movement to connect businesses with customers through messaging, whether through social media or private messaging channels such as WhatsApp, Messenger, SMS text, live messaging, or any other digital messaging means. Leading brands around the world – including Netflix, Slack, ENGIE, KBC Bank & Insurance and citizenM hotels – rely on Sparkcentral's Messaging Customer Service platform. Learn more at http://www.sparkcentral.com.
Sparkcentral Media Contact (US):
Len Fernandes
Firecracker PR
(+1) 888 317-4687, ext. 702
[email protected]
Sparkcentral Media Contact (Belgium):
Rafael Tirmarche
Quadrant Communications
(+32) 476 68 94 92
[email protected]
ENGIE Media Contact (Belgium)
Olivier Desclée
Corporate Communications
(+ 32) 2 501 56 89
[email protected]
SOURCE Sparkcentral
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