Customer Care

Customers are demanding that the power and utility industry do what it can to achieve sustainability and address climate change. Customers and regulators are increasingly demanding that companies offer greener options for energy, solutions that help increase energy efficiency and conservation for electric, gas and water challenges. The new interest in the environment is pushing demand response, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), smart metering, and a number of other initiatives.

Power and Utility companies can benefit from new customer facing web portals that allow customers to analyze their energy and water usage, and take advantage of new programs that can help customer achieve new levels electric, gas and water conservation. This dynamic can reduce costs, improve customer service and decrease demands on the environment.

First impressions are everything, so giving new customers choices among a utility's rate, billing, efficiency, and demand response options at first contact is a key driver for establishing a good relationship (or in competitive markets, retaining customers).

From a cost perspective, a utility benefits if the first contact is one of the last times a customer has to connect with the utility company about the account. Relationships can be enhanced by an integrated customer experience that gives the utility the opportunity to cross-sell or up-sell, or evaluate customers' credit situations. Systems that encourage better customer relationships also tend to reduce call handling times and thus increase agent retention rates, simultaneously lowering training costs.

Despite flagging customer service grades, utilities are usually reluctant to replace their entire service systems at once due to both the high costs and the complexities of legacy equipment. A failed installation can hurt a company's cash flow, negatively impact customer satisfaction scores, drive customers to competitors, and cause concern among regulators.

Using next generation, web-based self service solutions utilities can benefit from improving customer satisfaction. These solutions reduce by providing new and faster channels to resolve customer inquiries and present information in new ways, to improve customer understanding and relationships. To receive service from utilities, customers should be able to use all the technology avenues available to them, including phone, e-mail, text, and Internet account self-management systems.

Consumers are adapting to energy-efficiency and conservation technologies and, indeed, they want more of them. With this new consumption pattern comes greater adoption of automated metering, smart meters, and demand response, creating profound new requirements on Information Technology. Utilities will need IT systems that provide records management systems for customer billing and service requests.

The benefits of responding to consumer's technology consumerization of utility commodities are far-reaching. By encouraging efficiency, utilities extend the life of their existing generating assets and won't have overwhelming deadlines for creating new plants. In addition, enabling energy technology consumerization expands the utility's relationship with customers, giving them the ability to offer additional services and increase revenues.

Utility billing systems must be capable of handling new and complex rate and regulatory requirements such as green energy programs. They must have the ability to process and manipulate the interval data critical to successful handling of the associated intricate billing functions.

Using Microsoft and partner solutions, utilities can offer additional services and more tailored pricing options to customers based on their ability to assign costs and develop value-add billing regimes that customers can understand. Utilities benefit from quicker, more rationalized times for meter-to-cash.

Rising demand and increasing energy costs have created a new type of energy consumer, one that converts their home into a meaningful energy conservation opportunity.

And the smart energy home of tomorrow isn’t just about smart appliances; it’s also about putting consumer-friendly technology in consumers’ hands so they can manage their energy use. Consumers can take advantage of a technology boom to gather information and manage their energy consumption with products and services already on the market.

These technology advances appeal to consumers motivated to lessen their carbon footprint and preserve the environment, and those who simply want to live more economically. Consumers who conserve also help utilities prepare to manage more zero-carbon energy sources such as wind and solar and manage demand while keeping the lights on.

To help utilities meet consumer expectations, Microsoft has created Hohm, a new online application that enables consumers to better understand their energy usage by creating a detailed report about their home’s energy consumption, and then offering advice on how to cut energy use.

Microsoft Hohm uses advanced analytics licensed from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy to provide consumers with personalized energy-saving recommendations. Microsoft Hohm is an easy-to-use tool that helps consumers lower their energy bill and reduce their impact on the environment. The beta application is available at no cost to anyone in the United States with an Internet connection and can be accessed directly by visiting http://www.microsoft-hohm.com.