How To Run A Champion-Challenger Program To Perfect Your Utility CX

Utility customers face some critical economic challenges this year that require an increasingly sophisticated CX approach from the industry. Inflation, an upcoming high bill season, upticks in collections, and the need for payment assistance all drive elevated levels of customer demand and peak customer stress.

Utility Customer Service leaders need to be sure that their CS and CX teams are up to the task posed by these impending challenges. We can check our KPIs and poll our teams, but how do we really know for sure that they’re up to the challenge?

To ensure that your existing provider is up to the task, and to evaluate new potential partners who may be able to offer different vectors of value, a common best practice is to implement a Champion-Challenger model to your CX program.

What Is A Champion-Challenger Strategy?

The Champion Challenger model provides utility with a useful model for “stress testing” their CX operations without disrupting their current programs. In this approach, your current program, or your ‘Champion’, runs just like normal. You’ll need to refresh a document and workflow of your current operation, then introduce a ‘Challenger’ - a new CX provider - to run alongside your current program. The Challenger tests each component of your existing program by putting in place an alternate approach to measure performance comparable to your Champion. Over a short period of testing, the Champion-Challenger model tests key elements of your CX program to identify gaps, provide operational insights, and leverage opportunities for major improvements.

CX executives often choose a Champion-Challenger model when they want to examine

New performance data availability
A shift in business targets, e.g. risk to revenue
Shifts in the macroeconomic environment
Enhanced or upgraded functionality
New products
Fixing errors
New technology available

Benefits of a champion-challenger program include:

Reveal gaps and performance opportunities for your customer service teams.

Outline a better, more detailed understanding of the real-world impacts of each strategy deployed.
Mitigate the risk of an adverse impact to the business and CX performance by testing new strategies on a limited sample instead of quickly shifting gears all together.
Drive perpetual innovation and program enhancement in a controlled, tested environment so that the best strategy always takes over.
Promote consistent improvement based on real performance data.
Encourage proactive tracking, testing, and monitoring as part of your larger business strategy.

Implementing A Champion-Challenger Program

Assess Your Current Program

Your first step to implementing a champion-challenger program is to assess your current program and identify potential areas for change or improvement. This is your planning stage. At this juncture, it’s important to outline not only your current challenges, but any new goals you might have. Consider the following:

Analyze current performance data, industry trends, and any predicted shifts in the market to clearly identify the challenges you’d like to solve (or get ahead of). This should be translated into questions or hypotheses that can be tested.
Design a test to conclusively prove or disprove your hypotheses. To do this, you’ll need to make sure you have the right data in hand.
Ensure that your test plan includes defined objectives and goals, a proposed strategy design, operational considerations, execution approach, success criteria, and an evaluation timetable.
Identify a test population – this might be a subset of customers who have a clean credit record, or conversely, specifically targeting delinquent or at-risk customers.
Once your plan is outlined, run “what if” scenarios to determine additional challenger programs or areas to refine the current test model.

Onboard Your Challenger

If your planning is well thought out, implementing your test should then be a simple process. This is where you’ll have to sit back and collect the data – making tweaks along the way if necessary. Here, you’ll have to carefully track performance metrics across both your Champion and Challenger programs. Consider the following:

Split qualifying customers randomly into either the control (Champion) group, or one of the test groups (Challengers). You can run multiple tests at once. Take into consideration if a specific customer might fall into more than one group during testing – and take great care in these scenarios as not to skew the results either way.
Be sure that any variable that is not being tested by any of the Challengers be identical across all programs. So, if we’re testing the impact of SMS versus email offers for at-risk customers, the wording of the offer should be the same regardless of the delivery channel.
Be sure that customers are assigned to groups randomly. Unless the groups are identical, any measured difference in performance might be attributable to differences in the groups’ composition rather than to any difference in the strategies applied.

Measure The Success (Or Not) Of Each Program

Once testing is under way, you’ll need to monitor and measure the KPI of each program’s performance. This is where you will start to determine which strategy wins out. Consider the following:

Identify any variation in performance between the test and control groups. Define the impact to the overall business of each.
Be sure to analyze metrics established during the test plan phase to identify trends and changes as a result of a new challenger strategy. The challenger strategy will become the new champion if the test achieves or exceeds expectations over the previous status quo.
Only make these conclusions at the end of a well-defined test period. Taking in data at random intervals may skew your results.

Make Meaningful Changes To Your Program

With all performance data in hand, now is the time to declare a winner – and then put your new strategy into action. You may decide to shift entirely to the Challenger model, or you may uncover information that leads to the Champion reigning supreme – but with a few amendments based on what you’ve learned. Consider the following:

Which model had better performance metrics? Did you reach your overall objectives with one test program, or where pieces of each successful? This may warrant small changes to your existing program, or help define new testing criteria for another Champion-Challenger test.
If one strategy clearly wins out, all customers who were not included in that group should receive the communications/offer/etc. that the test group was sent. Monitor the performance of these programs closely to ensure they match up with the initial testing.

Keep in mind that before you make any changes based on these tests across the entire customer base, consider if there are any operational or logistical challenges or limitations that might hinder success of the program operating at a larger scale than the test group. Address any challenges or updates needed before executing any new strategy across the board.
Once you land on the right strategy, keep it in place until a future test proves to be more beneficial. You should keep testing as a regular part of your overall strategy to ensure that you are always running the best program possible.

Choose A Strategic Partner

In order to get the best results possible, and to get information about your program without sacrificing performance during the testing period, it is imperative to enlist the help of a strategic partner. This will ensure you can still focus on your day-to-day operations without faltering, while still getting the absolute most out of your test program. By having a partner on board, you can also more quickly action any changes to your program you’d like to make based on the results of your testing – and overcome any operational or technological hurdles in the way of implementation by using a well-equipped vendor. Consider the following when choosing a vendor:

Experience. Do they have experience with this type of testing, in your specific industry? Be sure to ask for use cases from similar clientele.
Collaboration. Will they bring ideas to the table to help optimize your program? Do they and have the right point of view and understanding of your customers to ensure you are getting the right information to make meaningful decisions that drive forward positive improvements?
Cost-Effectiveness. How cost-effective are they? Consider an offshore or nearshore partner to offset cost while still getting a high level of performance.
Defined Metrics / Goals. Be sure to have specific goals in place for partners to deliver against. Consider speed, agility, and resources.
Technology. Do they have the tools and infrastructure in place not only to handle robust testing, but to help you implement any changes at the end of your test cycle?

The Takeaway

Today’s challenges offer a prime opportunity for your Utility to put your CX program to the test. With today’s changing landscape and the outlook for what’s ahead, it’s absolutely critical that CX teams are prepared – and what better way than a non-invasive stress test to ensure your program is in tip-top shape?

When engaging a Champion-Challenger program, remember that you’re not just testing your internal ops, you’re also capturing valuable input about customer sentiment – and you’ll get feedback directly from the customers you service to make sure you’re building what’s right for them as you optimize your CX programs.

If you’re considering changes to your CX program, contact us to get started. We find it’s helpful to have an experienced partner to implement these types of pilots, and I’m happy to provide any support you need.