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Geospatial Customer Care Strategies in a Competitive Utility Market
Eric M. Stockton
Manager for Utility Spatial Solutions
Spatial Solutions Group
Oracle Corporation
6501 E. Belleview Ave.
Englewood, CO 80111
Tel: (720) 330-1670
Fax: (720) 330-2269
E-Mail: estockto@us.oracle.com
Eric M. Stockton
Manager for Utility Spatial Solutions
Spatial Solutions Group
Oracle Corporation
6501 E. Belleview Ave.
Englewood, CO 80111
Tel: (720) 330-1670
Fax: (720) 330-2269
E-Mail: estockto@us.oracle.com
Today’s utility companies are looking at implementing a spatially enabled Customer Care strategy as a means to gain a competitive advantage in the market. We will discuss how a strong corporate Customer Care initiative includes data sharing and integration with AM/FM, CIS, CRM, and ERP core systems. Geospatial Customer Care strategies can enhance communications before the sale, service provisioning and delivery, service verification, technical support, field service, billing, follow-up, monitoring customer satisfaction, marketing, and customer data tracking and analysis for decision support.
Geospatial Customer Care includes communications before the sale, service provisioning and delivery, service verification, technical support, field service, billing, follow-up, monitoring customer satisfaction, and customer data tracking and analysis for decision support. Each of these functions needs to be integrated into the Customer Care strategy. Taking good care of your customers is the key to success in a competitive deregulated industry.
Increased Competition
Increased competition and emerging deregulation should set standards for service reliability, safety, consumer protection, and environmental safeguards. Deregulation would require unbundling of electric rates as quickly as possible and full customer choice by a designated time.
In a deregulated market, competition will increase. Energy distributors will attempt to lure customers through pricing advantages, sophisticated bundling and unbundling of services, better customer service, and combinations of all the above. Business processes will need to be changed to allow customers to choose services with unbundled billing components, to allow for alternative customer field support options, and to allow for targeted marketing programs that will serve the specific needs of customers.
In the end, the customer will ask for and demand what customers have demanded in all competitive industries—better service, faster response, and less expensive pricing. The only way to reach these lofty goals is through a Geospatial Customer Care program that provides technology solutions, humanistic solutions, and process solutions that all point to better customer service, intelligent customer data, and more flexible solutions to fit customer needs. Spatial data plays a key role in effectively meeting the needs of your customers.
Utilities that avoid change or lose sight of the fact that they may have competition for the customer may find out that a long-term customer does not always mean a happy loyal customer. Customers can be retained in a competitive deregulated environment when the utility understands and provides the choice of services, the level of support, and the pricing model that the customer wants.
By leveraging existing customer data that resides in the CIS, acquiring targeted industry or regional demographic data, and generating a positive brand awareness based on a reputation of strong customer service and flexible appropriate solutions, utilities will not only retain customers, but will also build market share. As the utility builds strong brand awareness, the logical next step is to add new services. Bundling services and products is a tried and proven strategy throughout all deregulated industries. By investing in a spatial customer care initiative, the utility will be leveraging existing CIS data with network data, prospective customer demographics, and internal resource abilities into the core database by which decisions can be reached with more intelligence.
New advances in database technology now enable utilities to manage all their spatial data in the database and make it accessible to a large range of business applications, including ERP, enterprise resource planning, and CRM, customer relationship management. Current database technology provides high-end performance and reliability necessary to support location-enabled Front and Back Office applications like call centers, dispatching services, and network management activities. This data is now accessible through desktop, client-server, internet, and intranet environments. Both internal web deployment or external “customer facing” web applications assist in the mission of supporting and growing your customer market share.
Customer Care Definition
There is really only one reason to take good care of your customers. If you make your customers happy, they will continue to buy from you. These happy customers will become Loyal customers who will buy repeatedly and are more profitable.
Figure 1
As Figure 1 suggests, Customer Care is not only the practice of taking good care of your customers, but also identifying the customers that you are best able to profitably satisfy. Customer Care can be defined by all the ways in which the company and the customer interact. These include:
Geospatial Customer Care does not begin after the sale. Customers who have a full understanding of what services to expect, what level of support is offered, and what bundled and unbundled options they can order before the transaction will have a much easier and more stable transition from new customer to satisfied customer.
One easy step in providing a quality provisioning service is to have a service verification phase for each customer work order. This would occur after service interruptions, service modifications, or new service orders. In a strong Customer Care environment, this verification could be automated or manual, although automated should be more cost-effective. Conscientious follow-up always underscores the corporate intent to take good care of its customers. The speed and quality of providing technical support to a customer is indicative of how serious a company views the value of its customers. Good field service is the end product of quality Customer Care. If the field service organization does not reflect the customer-oriented attitude of the organization, then the initiative is weakened dramatically. This “touch point” with the customer can either provide final proof of a corporation’s customer commitment or sabotage the effort.
Utilities will be expected to navigate through the complexity of the billing process that deregulation will impose. For example, in one state, customers who elect to take service with another provider will see another bill. Direct access customers purchase energy from an Energy Service provider and continue receiving supply and delivery services from the original utility. A complex formula may determine the actual price for a bundled service customer. The customer will receive a bill that has adjustments based on the actual usage minus adjusted cost from the previous month.
For the Utility to keep its clients, this new billing complexity needs to be as painless as possible and transparent to the user where possible. To witness this impact, look at the long distance telephone industry where initial billing confusion created havoc among both business and residential customers.
In a Geospatial Customer Care model, customer satisfaction should be monitored regularly. This should occur through periodic surveys by mail, e-mail, Web, or phone. Organizations who keep an eye on the current pulse of their customers can react more swiftly and accurately to keep their customers satisfied. These surveys also provide an excellent marketing forum for additional bundled services or programs. Spatial trend analysis of these surveys also allow additional services and programs to be targeted at regions that drastically need improvement or regions that will generate acceptable levels of revenue.
Advantages/Benefits
Success in a competitive industry is the primary benefit of implementing a Geospatial Customer Care focus into the corporate strategy.
The expected benefits of a Geospatial Customer Care program are:
Figure 2
Some specific benefits from technology Customer Care Solutions are:
Utility Call Centers: Success is determined by quick response to customer complaints and fast resolution of reported outages and equipment problems. Adding spatial analysis to Customer Service department Call Center applications allows operators to view the location of all calls and correlate the locations to trouble types and nearby assets. With spatial technology, service providers can store attribute data for each customer including location, which is key for communicating with engineering and repair crews, and store the data for reporting to management and other departments.
Customer Service: Field service delivery requires utilities to track customer complaints, determine trouble types, and location of service problems. The information can then be passed to the proper personnel responsible for handling specific types of emergencies. Location enhanced service records can also by analyzed and correlated with historical trouble data, allowing engineers to see where recurring trouble poses serious threats and to decide how best to resolve network difficulties. The compiled information can be used to produce market strategies, marketing programs and network planning and management.
Sales and Marketing: An important retail marketing activity is analyzing population demographics with current customer lists to see what type of person might be attracted to a particular service in that area. For example, in the energy industry, this type of analysis is useful not only in determining areas for new service expansion, but also for predicting energy volume and usage per customer. Location-based analysis can be used to target potential customers and determine what types of services might be purchased in a given area based household income and family size variables. This information can also be used to target marketing efforts toward a specific audience, determine which services will be marketed in an area, and assist in designing rate plans.
In a deregulated environment, utilities are forced to open their market to competitors, but they are also allowed to start marketing other products and services to their customers.Each of these solutions leads to happier customers and to more focused service, marketing, and expansion plans.
Experience from other competitive industries has proven time and again that offering bundled services that customers will value is the key to growing market share and increasing corporate profits. Utilities positioning themselves to make the most of the competition are already racing ahead to deliver a host of innovative services. These companies need to serve the customer well, offer innovative services and products, and know where and how to deliver these services.
Tactics
Utilities are seeking effective tools to retain existing customers and attract new ones. One of the most effective tools is having a good marketing information system that is fed by a corporate Geospatial Customer Care program. A strong Geospatial Customer Care program can supply existing demographic data about client requirements, purchase history, bundling/unbundling desires, and numerous other tidbits that make the job of packaging an effective solution for the client much easier. The customer will determine the products and services that best meet their needs, as well as ultimately decide the industry’s winners and losers.
Utilities need to achieve customer loyalty and brand recognition in their industry before deregulation is fully implemented. With today’s Internet technology, competitors are evaluating the cost of attracting customers on the web verse attracting customers via mergers and acquisitions.
Energy firms that are doing business on-line must be able to answer the following questions—(1) What products and services will the customer find appealing? (2) Which products should they bundle or aggregate? (3) Where should these products or services be deployed and, (4) How does the Internet impact the question—is it cheaper to purchase customers in a merger or acquisition or simply rob them through an aggressive marketing program? Utilities are considering customer valuations as they evaluate where future business opportunities lie.
Customers can access information through the Internet, automated voice response (AVR) units, and electronic data interchange (EDI) solutions. Internally, a better customer service solution is the downstream impact of fast/accurate web-based reporting, a data mart or data warehouse, and reporting tools that can be downloaded to the desktop of the customer service representative. Geospatial Customer Care strategies should include all or parts of the following tactics:
Customers cannot afford to take off work for an entire day waiting for a service person. The utility must have the technical ability to provide the customer a window for service work. This can be accomplished through effective integration of CIS data within the work management system and a field service management/mobile dispatching system. Technologically aware consumers will eventually expect to access credit, portfolio, inventory, rate, billing, financial, and usage information on-line.
Geospatial Customer Care excellence can be attained by focusing on the following requirements:
Some utilities are using the Internet to help customers save more than 15 percent on their energy bills. This kind of service will build user loyalty that goes beyond a simple rate cut. The customers perform an audit regarding their specific lifestyle and energy usage. Upon completion of the survey, the customers submit their answers and receive feedback within a minute. The report offers a complete report on the customer’s energy usage and offers tips on how to reduce the household energy.
Summary
Geospatial data now plays an integral part of corporate customer care strategies. Utilities that make this investment need to be prepared to quantify their results. Results can be quantified by measuring CSR staff turnover, call length, customer growth, churn factor, corporate growth versus industry growth, industry awards, and customer surveys. By integrating spatial data through out the enterprise customer care strategy Utilities are able to:
Geospatial Customer Care includes communications before the sale, service provisioning and delivery, service verification, technical support, field service, billing, follow-up, monitoring customer satisfaction, and customer data tracking and analysis for decision support. Each of these functions needs to be integrated into the Customer Care strategy. Taking good care of your customers is the key to success in a competitive deregulated industry.
Increased Competition
Increased competition and emerging deregulation should set standards for service reliability, safety, consumer protection, and environmental safeguards. Deregulation would require unbundling of electric rates as quickly as possible and full customer choice by a designated time.
In a deregulated market, competition will increase. Energy distributors will attempt to lure customers through pricing advantages, sophisticated bundling and unbundling of services, better customer service, and combinations of all the above. Business processes will need to be changed to allow customers to choose services with unbundled billing components, to allow for alternative customer field support options, and to allow for targeted marketing programs that will serve the specific needs of customers.
In the end, the customer will ask for and demand what customers have demanded in all competitive industries—better service, faster response, and less expensive pricing. The only way to reach these lofty goals is through a Geospatial Customer Care program that provides technology solutions, humanistic solutions, and process solutions that all point to better customer service, intelligent customer data, and more flexible solutions to fit customer needs. Spatial data plays a key role in effectively meeting the needs of your customers.
Utilities that avoid change or lose sight of the fact that they may have competition for the customer may find out that a long-term customer does not always mean a happy loyal customer. Customers can be retained in a competitive deregulated environment when the utility understands and provides the choice of services, the level of support, and the pricing model that the customer wants.
By leveraging existing customer data that resides in the CIS, acquiring targeted industry or regional demographic data, and generating a positive brand awareness based on a reputation of strong customer service and flexible appropriate solutions, utilities will not only retain customers, but will also build market share. As the utility builds strong brand awareness, the logical next step is to add new services. Bundling services and products is a tried and proven strategy throughout all deregulated industries. By investing in a spatial customer care initiative, the utility will be leveraging existing CIS data with network data, prospective customer demographics, and internal resource abilities into the core database by which decisions can be reached with more intelligence.
New advances in database technology now enable utilities to manage all their spatial data in the database and make it accessible to a large range of business applications, including ERP, enterprise resource planning, and CRM, customer relationship management. Current database technology provides high-end performance and reliability necessary to support location-enabled Front and Back Office applications like call centers, dispatching services, and network management activities. This data is now accessible through desktop, client-server, internet, and intranet environments. Both internal web deployment or external “customer facing” web applications assist in the mission of supporting and growing your customer market share.
Customer Care Definition
There is really only one reason to take good care of your customers. If you make your customers happy, they will continue to buy from you. These happy customers will become Loyal customers who will buy repeatedly and are more profitable.
Figure 1
As Figure 1 suggests, Customer Care is not only the practice of taking good care of your customers, but also identifying the customers that you are best able to profitably satisfy. Customer Care can be defined by all the ways in which the company and the customer interact. These include:
- Customer questions before the sale
- Customer order or transaction
- Shipping/Installation
- Verification of service
- Technical support
- Field service
- Billing service
- Follow-up
- Monitoring customer service
- Monitoring of customer interaction
- Data and analysis for decision support.
Geospatial Customer Care does not begin after the sale. Customers who have a full understanding of what services to expect, what level of support is offered, and what bundled and unbundled options they can order before the transaction will have a much easier and more stable transition from new customer to satisfied customer.
One easy step in providing a quality provisioning service is to have a service verification phase for each customer work order. This would occur after service interruptions, service modifications, or new service orders. In a strong Customer Care environment, this verification could be automated or manual, although automated should be more cost-effective. Conscientious follow-up always underscores the corporate intent to take good care of its customers. The speed and quality of providing technical support to a customer is indicative of how serious a company views the value of its customers. Good field service is the end product of quality Customer Care. If the field service organization does not reflect the customer-oriented attitude of the organization, then the initiative is weakened dramatically. This “touch point” with the customer can either provide final proof of a corporation’s customer commitment or sabotage the effort.
Utilities will be expected to navigate through the complexity of the billing process that deregulation will impose. For example, in one state, customers who elect to take service with another provider will see another bill. Direct access customers purchase energy from an Energy Service provider and continue receiving supply and delivery services from the original utility. A complex formula may determine the actual price for a bundled service customer. The customer will receive a bill that has adjustments based on the actual usage minus adjusted cost from the previous month.
For the Utility to keep its clients, this new billing complexity needs to be as painless as possible and transparent to the user where possible. To witness this impact, look at the long distance telephone industry where initial billing confusion created havoc among both business and residential customers.
In a Geospatial Customer Care model, customer satisfaction should be monitored regularly. This should occur through periodic surveys by mail, e-mail, Web, or phone. Organizations who keep an eye on the current pulse of their customers can react more swiftly and accurately to keep their customers satisfied. These surveys also provide an excellent marketing forum for additional bundled services or programs. Spatial trend analysis of these surveys also allow additional services and programs to be targeted at regions that drastically need improvement or regions that will generate acceptable levels of revenue.
Advantages/Benefits
Success in a competitive industry is the primary benefit of implementing a Geospatial Customer Care focus into the corporate strategy.
The expected benefits of a Geospatial Customer Care program are:
- Customer retention
- Decrease churn rate
- Brand name recognition
- New services acceptance
- Increase market intelligence
- Increase market share.
Figure 2
Some specific benefits from technology Customer Care Solutions are:
- Technology allows you to provide instruments that will cut your residential load in half by measuring individual appliance power consumption at the meter.
- Controller software can increase a customer’s savings over 300 percent in a real-time pricing program.
- A homeowner can turn on the TV to pay the electricity bill and discover that an appliance such as a refrigerator needs repairs.
- A factory keeps energy bills down month after month by automatically sequencing equipment operation with every electricity price fluctuation.
- A hand-held wireless computer lets a utility sales rep run through three different rate options with a building owner, tweak the best option until the customer is completely satisfied, and implement the new rate on the spot.
- One utility was able to reduce a customer’s electricity bill over $100,000. The utility also benefited by saving over $150,000 in reduced peak demand and fuel cost. The surprise benefit was customer retention. On the basis of the savings, the customer turned down a co-generation proposal.
Utility Call Centers: Success is determined by quick response to customer complaints and fast resolution of reported outages and equipment problems. Adding spatial analysis to Customer Service department Call Center applications allows operators to view the location of all calls and correlate the locations to trouble types and nearby assets. With spatial technology, service providers can store attribute data for each customer including location, which is key for communicating with engineering and repair crews, and store the data for reporting to management and other departments.
Customer Service: Field service delivery requires utilities to track customer complaints, determine trouble types, and location of service problems. The information can then be passed to the proper personnel responsible for handling specific types of emergencies. Location enhanced service records can also by analyzed and correlated with historical trouble data, allowing engineers to see where recurring trouble poses serious threats and to decide how best to resolve network difficulties. The compiled information can be used to produce market strategies, marketing programs and network planning and management.
Sales and Marketing: An important retail marketing activity is analyzing population demographics with current customer lists to see what type of person might be attracted to a particular service in that area. For example, in the energy industry, this type of analysis is useful not only in determining areas for new service expansion, but also for predicting energy volume and usage per customer. Location-based analysis can be used to target potential customers and determine what types of services might be purchased in a given area based household income and family size variables. This information can also be used to target marketing efforts toward a specific audience, determine which services will be marketed in an area, and assist in designing rate plans.
In a deregulated environment, utilities are forced to open their market to competitors, but they are also allowed to start marketing other products and services to their customers.Each of these solutions leads to happier customers and to more focused service, marketing, and expansion plans.
Experience from other competitive industries has proven time and again that offering bundled services that customers will value is the key to growing market share and increasing corporate profits. Utilities positioning themselves to make the most of the competition are already racing ahead to deliver a host of innovative services. These companies need to serve the customer well, offer innovative services and products, and know where and how to deliver these services.
Tactics
Utilities are seeking effective tools to retain existing customers and attract new ones. One of the most effective tools is having a good marketing information system that is fed by a corporate Geospatial Customer Care program. A strong Geospatial Customer Care program can supply existing demographic data about client requirements, purchase history, bundling/unbundling desires, and numerous other tidbits that make the job of packaging an effective solution for the client much easier. The customer will determine the products and services that best meet their needs, as well as ultimately decide the industry’s winners and losers.
Utilities need to achieve customer loyalty and brand recognition in their industry before deregulation is fully implemented. With today’s Internet technology, competitors are evaluating the cost of attracting customers on the web verse attracting customers via mergers and acquisitions.
Energy firms that are doing business on-line must be able to answer the following questions—(1) What products and services will the customer find appealing? (2) Which products should they bundle or aggregate? (3) Where should these products or services be deployed and, (4) How does the Internet impact the question—is it cheaper to purchase customers in a merger or acquisition or simply rob them through an aggressive marketing program? Utilities are considering customer valuations as they evaluate where future business opportunities lie.
Customers can access information through the Internet, automated voice response (AVR) units, and electronic data interchange (EDI) solutions. Internally, a better customer service solution is the downstream impact of fast/accurate web-based reporting, a data mart or data warehouse, and reporting tools that can be downloaded to the desktop of the customer service representative. Geospatial Customer Care strategies should include all or parts of the following tactics:
- Customer intimacy
- Targeting and segmentation
- Product tailoring
- Customer reward programs.
Customers cannot afford to take off work for an entire day waiting for a service person. The utility must have the technical ability to provide the customer a window for service work. This can be accomplished through effective integration of CIS data within the work management system and a field service management/mobile dispatching system. Technologically aware consumers will eventually expect to access credit, portfolio, inventory, rate, billing, financial, and usage information on-line.
Geospatial Customer Care excellence can be attained by focusing on the following requirements:
- Develop a clear strategy for customer loyalty.
- Make an enterprise wide commitment.
- Develop a sound process to serve your customers.
- Use an integrated system for the entire process.
- Ensure that your system can handle new bundled or unbundled products.
- Be prepared to handle large distributed data sets.
- Strive for off-the-shelf solutions with flexible interface options.
- Provide adequate technical and customer service training for front-line people.
- Develop an effective feedback process.
Some utilities are using the Internet to help customers save more than 15 percent on their energy bills. This kind of service will build user loyalty that goes beyond a simple rate cut. The customers perform an audit regarding their specific lifestyle and energy usage. Upon completion of the survey, the customers submit their answers and receive feedback within a minute. The report offers a complete report on the customer’s energy usage and offers tips on how to reduce the household energy.
Summary
Geospatial data now plays an integral part of corporate customer care strategies. Utilities that make this investment need to be prepared to quantify their results. Results can be quantified by measuring CSR staff turnover, call length, customer growth, churn factor, corporate growth versus industry growth, industry awards, and customer surveys. By integrating spatial data through out the enterprise customer care strategy Utilities are able to:
- Optimize customer prospecting/marketing
- Optimize customer support/dispatch functions
- Prioritize customers by:
- Profitability
- Location
- Available network services
- Loyal customers buy more often and spend more when they buy.
- Loyal customers are less price sensitive and will look at the value.
- Selling cost is lower.
- Referrals.