Help Customers Better Manage Their Energy Use
Better educated customers mean more satisfied customers – and fewer calls.
The term Automated Metering Reading (AMR) has morphed into the term Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) to reflect that there is tremendous potential value beyond that achieved by automating the meter reading process. Utilities are just beginning to focus on ways to extract the true value of automated metering. Business cases for Advanced Metering are addressing the benefits associated with such functions as:
- Theft detection which can enhance revenue.
- Implementation of rate-based demand-response programs to reduce peak system requirements.
- Distribution asset optimization based on actual information on hourly loads at any point on the network.
- Improved customer service that can help customers identify factors that affected their energy usage levels and reduce customer service call.
Energy companies across North America have found that helping their customers better manage their energy use makes good business sense. This is certainly true for companies with Demand-Side Management (DSM) programs, but can be equally true for other companies as well.
Traditional DSM programs such as in home audits and rebates still have their place, but they are expensive and do little to change the way the customer views you.
Aclara Software's ENERGYprism® customer care solutions offer a comprehensive but low cost, multi-channel approach to supporting energy management goals, including on-line, e-mail, phone, and mail communications to reach customers the way they want to be reached.
Giving customers a sense of control over their energy use is one way of enhancing relationships and changing the perception of the role of the energy company. Just knowing that the company offers such services can help:
- One utility client which directly funded an ENERGYprism implementation in a state where DSM dollars are spent by the state, measured higher customer satisfaction after airing a TV ad about the Aclara Software tools.
- In focus groups at a deregulated energy company, 90% of business customers indicated higher satisfaction with the company just knowing that an on-line Business Energy Center was available.
ENERGYprism is not an on-line version of an energy survey that requires customers to complete 30 minutes worth of questions before they receive any response. It is a highly graphical, interactive set of tools that provides immediate and continuing feedback.
ENERGYprism represents a personalized on-line customer energy center that customers can return to in order to get their energy management questions answered. It is designed to be part of web customer service and on-line bill presentment, so that customers going on-line to view, pay, or get answers about their bill can then drill down to find ways to better manage their bills. This set of integrated functionality has helped put ENERGYprism’s energy management capability in front of millions of customers.
ENERGYprism is all about customer communications, which can be conducted on-line, via e-mail and through other channels. One of the issues facing many utilities implementing demand-side management and critical peak pricing programs is how to get customers – particularly mass market customers – to respond to price and other signals. The keys are: a) finding the customers who are likely to have the most significant impacts and; b) effectively communicating with customers about what their options are and how much impacts these options will have.
ENERGYprism accomplishes both objectives with:
- Screening tools that let customers self-select for demand-response programs by projecting potential savings, and also enable utilities to identify the customers that would yield the greatest program impacts.
- e-Mail and web-based communications which explain options and the likely impacts of those options on the individual customer, and keep customers informed of how they are doing.
- Helping customers really understand can improve satisfaction and drive down costs. ENERGYprism delivers in a highly cost-effective manner.