Stadtwerke Ratingen | jtel Success Story

Fully remote deployment of the jtel solution enables SWR employees to continue delivering outstanding customer service during the COVID pandemic, whether at home or in the office

Outstanding service strategies for a leading utility

Overview

Delivering a high level of service places equally high demands on the call center, customer service and the technology they use. The previous telephone system was increasingly reaching its limits.

Challenge

SWR needed a solution offering more advanced functions than its existing telephone system. However, the COVID pandemic meant that remote working was not the only requirement: deployment and training also had to be carried out remotely.

Solution

An intelligent migration process ensured business continuity, while jtel's solution natively supports distributed workstations and home-office connections, allowing the team to access advanced customer service functions from any location.

jtel's industry solution for Stadtwerke Ratingen

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As a local utility, Stadtwerke Ratingen (SWR) supplies electricity, gas, water and heating solutions to residential and business customers. As an essential service provider, it also operates the associated supply networks. Outstanding customer service and 24/7 availability of its fault reporting center are indispensable. Delivering a high level of service places equally high demands on the call center, customer service and the technology they use. The previous telephone system was increasingly reaching its limits. The company therefore looked for a new solution offering flexibility, process optimization and a wide range of analysis options. A project team of telecommunications specialists from KomMITT Ratingen, a wholly owned SWR subsidiary, took on the search for a suitable system. KomMITT carried out market research and then contacted the Kapsch Group, a well-known reseller of telecommunications and other IT solutions. Kapsch recommended jtel, and the first meeting took place in February 2020. Shortly after that first meeting, however, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. This brought new challenges, as the requirements of the service team, which had previously worked on-site, shifted towards an even more flexible solution that could be used while working remotely. jtel responded promptly, using remote support and screen-sharing software for presentations and to exchange and collect the data needed to implement the project, supported by communication over conventional voice connections. This gave the project fresh momentum and led to a contract being signed in mid-March.

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Once the jtel solution had been selected, the task was to manage all the necessary coordination and preparatory work entirely remotely using modern communication tools, while ensuring a smooth migration from the original platform. The project team chose an “intelligent migration process,” in which the jtel platform ran alongside the existing solution and users were moved individually to the new platform, step by step. At the same time, the new users needed training. This also had to be carried out remotely, as the normal on-site training model was not possible during lockdown. The system successfully went live in May. Everything required was done remotely. Within a few months, 90% of users had migrated, with the rest following shortly afterwards. The jtel solution has always supported distributed workstations and home-office connections, allowing agents and users to access all functions from different locations: some from the offices, others from home. There was no difference in effectiveness. In addition, the remote training carried out for the jtel solution was a great success thanks to the system's ease of use. Its intuitive design requires significantly less training than other contact center solutions. Today, 40 agents and three administrators use the new system. They can all work remotely from home through a secure VPN connection. The service team continues to provide the outstanding service and support essential to SWR's energy business, but with new improvements such as real-time status displays, an intuitive graphical interface for creating call flows and easy access to key performance statistics. The system offers both browser-based access and access through a MiniClient. Over time, CRM will be integrated with jtel and the solution extended to other communication channels such as WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams, providing a rich omnichannel experience.