Utility companies serve an incredibly diverse customer base and must maintain a complex infrastructure to support it. With the ongoing challenges of utility downtime due to damages, system updates, and infrastructure improvement, keeping each of those customers informed and managing the infrastructure are huge tasks. Also, to run their businesses more efficiently, utility companies need to continually enrich their understanding of metrics such as demographic statistics, community growth, and key customer attributes.

 

How the Virtual Earth Platform Meets Those Challenges

With the Virtual Earth platform, your company can enhance your custom Web site to help make it easier for employees, subcontractors, and customers to search for, locate, and visualize utility work schedules and other relevant utility information. This in turn can help reduce the amount of employee time spent dealing with customers on the phone and ultimately result in the reduction or redeployment of phone support staff.

 

Your Virtual Earth powered site can help create a personal connection with those you serve and offer important insight into your business through analysis of business metrics, distribution networks, and asset management.

 

Typical Applications

Here are a few ways your utility company can use the features and functionality of the Virtual Earth platform:

• Improve communication with customers by mapping affected areas during periods of downtime and use color coding or overlays to indicate status, coverage areas, or other information.
• Allow customers to track work progress, view plans for future work, and determine alternate travel routes to avoid delays.
• Track and forecast infrastructure needs and risks and manage customer needs through visualizations of planned improvements and potential problem areas.

 

Benefits

A Virtual Earth implementation can help both your organization and your customers realize multiple advantages:

• Connect with customers to help improve satisfaction. Communicate the location and severity of service outages, mark areas where maintenance is being performed, and provide work updates along with alternate driving directions.
• Effectively manage and support complex infrastructures. Map time-saving service routes, visualize remote service teams and direct them to areas in need, and keep track of important equipment so you can send it wherever it is needed most.
• Enrich the understanding of metrics such as demographic statistics and key customer attributes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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