Posted by Donna Ricker on Tue, Aug 24, 2010 @ 09:28 AM
Utilities operate not only as a business, but also as a public trust. Maintaining that trust depends on the ability to offer customers safe, reliable service as well as timely information.
Your customers place their confidence in you to keep them informed if a situation requires their awareness or their cooperation. Proactive customer communication is a key and a reliable outbound notification system gives you the confidence and peace of mind to quickly communicate critical customer information. Customers are more satisfied when their utility actively communicates with them.
Here are just a few of the ways that proactive outbound communications can improve customer satisfaction:
Outage Notifications
- Unexpected outage apology and explanation
- Planned outages
- Rolling blackouts
- Restoration verification
- Critical care customer calls
AMI Messages
- Current smart meter / smart grid project status update (e.g., regulatory hearing status and where to go for more information)
- Meter replacement schedule
- Meter replacement confirmation
- 60 - 90 day follow-up
Service Messages
- Meter reading
- Vegetation management
- Conservation program information
- Curtailment requests
Billing Messages
- Payment reminders
- Collections
- Billing errors
- Seasonal rate changes
- Payment assistance program information
In addition to customer interactions, an outbound notification system can have a positive impact on internal stakeholders.
Internal Communications
- Staffing and workforce management
- Business continuity
- Employee accountability
- Human Resources policy changes
- Employee meting reminders
Exceed your customers' expectations with a proactive outbound communication plan.
Additional Information:
Posted by Donna Ricker on Mon, Aug 09, 2010 @ 11:13 AM
The peak of the summer season is upon us and with it comes peak demands for energy to cool our homes and buildings. Several utilities are reporting record energy usage. Check out this story from ConEd. Here are three best practice tips we recommend to our utility clients:
- Proactive Customer Communications: Use IVR technology & automation to reach out to customers, asking them to reduce their power usage. It follows the old “if you don’t ask you don’t get” theory. The calls can be crafted to take less than 30 seconds and simply ask customers to reduce their power consumption during peak usage hours of the day or evening.
- Communicate To All Channels: Talk to customers using their preferred device. It seems like everybody has a cell or smart phone. And yes lots of people still have landlines. So send your power curtailment message to every device you can. TFCC lets you easily reach a large number of customers, very quickly, using any communication device. Talk about effective and efficient.
- Hit The Hot Spots: Send your proactive customer communications only to those areas most affected by the heat. Target calling also lets the utility rotate areas so that the request isn’t made of the same consumers time after time.
I live in an area 35 miles outside the closest city and am served by an electric cooperative. In my case, the co-op elects to purchase drive time radio spots during peak usage periods to make the announcement. These messages, while well scripted, reach a far wider audience than the co-op serves. In addition, since not everyone listens to my favorite station, the media buy has to include several stations. This is an example of how proactive outbound communications would be more targeted and less expensive with a simple phone call.
Posted by Donna Ricker on Wed, Jul 21, 2010 @ 08:16 AM
New Utility Communication Alliance Offers Customer Self-Service and Power Outage Communication Choices
To succeed in today’s fast-paced world, utilities must communicate with their customers in every imaginable way, including landlines, cell phones, pagers, voicemail, text messaging, e-mail and more. Twenty First Century Communications (TFCC), provider of utility communication solutions, and iFactor Consulting, a leading supplier of utility software and consulting services, today announced a strategic alliance offering utilities new ways of using technology to connect people to information.
Utilities have long used TFCC's High Volume Call Answering system to field the large influx of calls during power outages. Now, incase of a power outage, TFCC utility customers can... Read more>>
Posted by Nicky Miller on Tue, Jul 06, 2010 @ 12:02 PM
Summer is officially upon us and TFCC clients are putting their emergency notification system to work sending out summer related messages. Your notification system is ideal for sending out the following messages:
Need help crafting your message? Request a copy of our Message Script Design Tool Kit.
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Posted by Donna Ricker on Wed, Jun 30, 2010 @ 01:52 PM
We just returned from the Southeastern Electric Exchange (SEE) conference in Miami. We've worked with SEE for years and the conference was a great chance to catch up with old friends, and to hear what's on the minds of today's utilities. Here's a quick recap of a few hot topics at the conference:
- Smart Grid / Advanced Metering Infrastructure - This remains on every utility's agenda. The topic in the Customer Service breakout was "what keeps you up at night" and every utility talked about the need for communications internally, externally and to all stakeholders. The need to plan now for all types of utility communications in the future is paramount. Consistent communication messaging was a recurring theme.
Here at TFCC we're working on several ideas for helping utilities maximize the AMI to collect and distribute information to & from customers. And to define how, when and what to communicate to who in the AMI Life Cycle. Stay tuned for details.
- Call Center Mutual Assistance: We hosted a get-together at the SEE conference to chat about the Mutual Assistance Routing System. MARS enables utilities to automatically redirect high volumes of outage calls to other utilities during an emergency. We'd like to express a very special thank you to Angie Leslie from Tampa Electric. Angie stepped in at the last minute to tell everyone how Pepco used MARS during last February's record setting snow storm, to route phone calls away from their Washington D.C. call center directly to Tampa Electric's call center - in essence creating a virtual call center on the fly.
- Awards: Congratulations to Entergy for winning the Industry Excellence Award in the Customer Service and Billing category for their "Entergy My Account Online" project. The program offers 19 different and fully automated services.
Posted by Donna Ricker on Mon, Jun 28, 2010 @ 09:07 AM
TFCC has found that customers are more satisfied with their energy provider if the utility uses a proactive approach to customer communications. Here are a few best practice suggestions to help you provide better customer service during outage situations.
- Ask Caller If They Would Like a Callback - Customer satisfaction studies reflect significant improvement when the power company provides a restoration callback to confirm that power has been restored. Asking the customer for permission is a courtesy that can allow the customer to state if they would like a callback regardless of the time of day/night.
Additionally, the callback can be used as a tool for the crew to confirm that all power has been restored downstream before rolling the trucks away. As more and more customers rely on their cell phone, TFCC can also help you send text messages instead of phone callbacks.
- Power Restoration Callback - Calling customers once their power is restored is a very positive way to touch the customer and improve satisfaction. It catches any stray customer outages while the crew may be nearby.
- Status Callback with Updated Outage Information - This is a courtesy call that increases customer satisfaction by pushing information to the customer instead of the customer calling back into the call center.
- Flag for Special Needs Customers - This is another opportunity to increase customer satisfaction by offering special needs customers a chance to talk with a rep after reporting their outage or to flag their outage ticket so it can be prioritized based on medical needs.
Posted by Donna Ricker on Mon, Jun 28, 2010 @ 08:51 AM
The TFCC Client Management team has assembled a list of 7 IVR best practice suggestions for our utility clients. Our goal is to help you get the very most out of your High Volume Call Answering (HVCA) system.
- Real-time Interface - TFCC finds that the fastest and most accurate way to communicate with a customer and provide a positive caller experience is to have a real-time interface between the IVR and the CIS/OMS.
This allows the utility to provide the most up to date and accurate outage information available. This increases the customer match rate in the utility database and also provides for a real time outage ticket to more quickly get a footprint of the outage at hand.
- Recognize and Handle Shut-Off for Non-Pay in IVR - Recognizing that a customer is a shut-off for non-pay not only eliminates a truck getting dispatched to a shut-off location but also provides an opportunity to instruct the caller as to how they can get their service reconnected.
A shut-off for non-pay module can be completely automated or the call can be transferred to an agent so that payment can be made and service re-established without requiring the customer to make multiple calls.
- Accurate Area Specific Messaging and ERT - When customers call they want to know WHY their power is out, and WHEN it will be restored. Providing this information in the IVR flow increases customer satisfaction and also reduces the number of times the caller will call back.
- Up Front Messages- During a large outage or storm event a generic message at the beginning of the IVR script is an efficient way to communicate a consistent message to all callers. We find that many callers are satisfied after hearing the message and hang up instead of moving through the IVR or transferring to a representative.
During a significant event, in which the utility already has a footprint of the outage and may not need more outage tickets, we recommend changing that message to communicate this fact. This helps build customer confidence that your best efforts are in place.
Up Front Messages enhance the outage communication experience, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce data management & IVR call time. Up Front Messages can also provide emergency information in a severe event.
- Repeat Caller Message with Time of Last Call - TFCC has long recommended that callers receive an acknowledgment that they have already called. Also, providing the time of the last call gives the caller assurance that the utility is paying attention and establishes trust. This reduces additional repeat caller scenarios during the current power outage as well as future outages.
- Home and Alternate Phone in Database - TFCC has found that a utility match rate in the IVR can grow as much as 20% if there is more than one phone field to match on in the database. More and more people are becoming mobile and may not remember which phone number they used to set up their account. Storing more than one phone and making those phone numbers available during the account match process will increase the match rate, speed up the call and increase customer satisfaction.
- Simple Main Menu with 3 or Less Selections - Giving too many options in the main menu can lead to confusion and frustration if the customer takes the wrong path. So simplify the main menu to include no more than three selections - including one selection for "outage update." For example, your main menu could read: To report an electric outage condition, press 1. For Outage update information, press 2, for a down wire press 3. If the customer selects 1 for an outage condition, the next menu could be used to drill down for additional detail such as flickering lights, partial outage or all out.
Posted by Nicky Miller on Tue, Jun 01, 2010 @ 09:27 AM
Twenty First Century Communications (TFCC) introduces
TFCC Alert®, the newest version of its'
notification system. New advanced alerting capabilities improve communications, increase the effectiveness of emergency efforts, and ultimately reduce the costs of a traditional communications infrastructure.
With the TFCC Alert government, corporate, utility, education and healthcare clients can send targeted messages to select groups or geographic areas by landline, cell phone, VoIP phone, PDA, pager, text, email, fax and TTY/TDD machines. The system also integrates with Twitter, which will give clients greater reach in fewer steps.
Jim Curran, chief technology officer for TFCC reports, "Our research and development process includes extensive work with government, corporate, utility, education and healthcare clients who use our emergency notification system every day. TFCC Alert is a blend of ideas and requests from customers, our product development team and our client management team."
TFCC Alert includes a new user interface. The task based workflow and one-page quick launch make sending notifications stress-free. Users now select the type of message they'd like to send and TFCC Alert will present only the options needed for the particular message type.
TFCC Alert allows for an unlimited number of users and includes a flexible array of user profiles with different permissions, access and visibility restrictions. The system also allows for limitless security groups and provides clients with the ability to self-manage their groups.
The new weather module lets government agencies notify citizens of rapidly approaching severe weather. The public can register to receive severe thunderstorm, flash flood and tornado warnings on their landline or cell phone.
Government agencies can continue to collect unlisted phone numbers, cell phone numbers and email addresses via the enhanced public sign-up page. The new sign-up page allows residents to register up to five additional contacts under their account, such as parents, siblings, and spouses.
Client Comments:
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Lynn Diebold, Director of Emergency Communications for
Monterey County, CA , has previewed the system and said, "I like that the activation and creation process is uncluttered, and that the default options are customizable and can be changed based on my needs."
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In reviewing the new features, Brian Saul, Corporate Director EC & Safety Management for Ohio Health Corporation/Grant Riverside Methodist Hospital, said, "I love the idea of unlimited security groups and the one-page campaign activation. And because most of the campaign activation are premade, the one-page "select message and go" option is ideal for us."
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"TFCC Alert is straight forward and simple. I'm very pleased that the activation process takes one page instead of multiple pages. The new look is much cleaner", said Bob Armstrong, Director, Emergency Management & Fire Prevention for the
Ohio State University.
Watch the following video to learn more about TFCC Alert for Government. Videos for Corporate and Utilities are available on our YouTube channel.
Posted by Donna Ricker on Mon, May 24, 2010 @ 11:56 AM
The utilities industry is in the midst of an evolution, one in which customer satisfaction, efficiency and communication are essential. Utilities will need to engage in an unprecedented level of interaction with their customers. TFCC is introducing two new solutions that will help utilities greatly accelerate cash flow and improve customer service.
- Multi-Channel Interactive Collections is an automated, interactive means of contacting delinquent, high-risk, over-the-limit and charged-off customers. Automated collection messages can be sent through landlines, cell phones, email and fax. Messages provide customers with multiple immediate payment options and secure promises-to-pay. The end result - more people are contacted and more payments are made.
- Automated Customer Survey is an interactive customer messaging solution that helps utilities develop and implement completely customized automated surveys via outbound phone calls. This interactive survey tool collects customer feedback using any touchtone telephone.
Posted by Donna Ricker on Tue, Apr 13, 2010 @ 02:59 PM
An article in this month's issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly does a good job of outlining where the smart-grid journey is taking the utility industry's customer service process. The article is titled Customer Service 2020: Grid upgrades spark an interactivity revolution. Author Michael T. Burr pulled together a roundtable discussion of experts from seven leading companies including Twenty First Century Communications, Oracle, HP, Convergys and others. The story does a very nice job of "laying a foundation for a new world of customer interaction that will benefit both utilities and customers."
Check it out and let us know what you think.