Executive summary

The Australian Gas Light Company (AGL) is one of Australia’s leading integrated energy companies. AGL is taking action to responsibly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions while providing secure and affordable energy to its customers. The brand wanted to enhance the energy experience by supporting the digital channels where their customers and stakeholders choose to communicate, collaborate, and transact. To accomplish their goal, AGL launched a Khoros-powered community. Their community is now a digital destination where customers can easily find support, educational content, and pee-rto-peer information. AGL also leveraged Khoros Marketing and Care to respond to customers on social in real-time.

Previously, AGL was conducting all of their social media support natively on Twitter and Facebook. But, as their social team — and their audience — grew, they sought out Khoros to help them respond to their customers at scale. AGL had been challenged to deliver marketing and care support in a consistent fashion with multiple teams in different countries. Teams in India, the Philippines, and Australia needed the technology and workflow to respond in real time and maintain quality. By having every team in one platform leveraging Khoros tools, AGL provided more consistent and timely service. When they launched their community, their goal was that it would be a dedicated online forum where customers could share and discuss their experiences and find information and solutions. In order to promote their community, the brand worked with Khoros to build intelligent, contextual FAQ integration on their website leveraging the Khoros REST API. This allowed customers to easily find answers to commonly asked questions at the right time. Within the AGL community, AGL customers have access to content and support in a way that helps them build trust with the brand and feel empowered as consumers.

The AGL community has been a great success: it offers customers easy access to content and support in a way that helps them build trust with the brand and feel empowered. Community is delivering significant value by way of attributed sales and support deflection. In their first year of partnership with Khoros, AGL delivered over one million AUD value to the business. The social care workflow in Khoros Marketing and Care allows their blended team — located in India, the Philippines, and Australia — to respond in real time without sacrificing the quality of service. Finally, the best-in-breed analytical capability of the Khoros platform allows AGL to use tangible metrics to support their reporting.

“Our initial goal was to provide a way to divert calls from our call center, but our community quickly became a source of truth in the industry with our knowledge base articles, in addition to providing a seamless pathway for our customers to get support.”

— Liam Woods
Digital Community Channel Manager, AGL Energy