Customer Relations

Online information services and apps are playing an increasingly important role in helping utility providers enhance customer satisfaction. They are key to providing better user experience during service interruptions, helping to establishtrust and developing better customer relations. Our solutions enable operators to publish rich data online and interact with their customers using the web and apps.

Through integration with operational systems, operators can publish broader and more valuable information. They can advise customers of service interruptions – from current operational views of unplanned outages to advanced information, such as dates, the areas affected, and reason for the works. Publishing service quality data, such as statistics and regulator scores and reports, helps develop trust.

This can be further enhanced by providing information on activities the company is undertaking in customers’ localities, such as how money is being invested to improve services in the area, environmental projects undertaken, community activities, and more. Electronic services can also simplify communication from customers, like offering location-enabled smartphone apps to give customers more immediate and practical ways to report issues.

Crowdsourcing provides a valuable, supplemental source of real-time intelligence on critical issues directly from the field, such as burst water mains or flooding from sewers. Mobile Alert engages members of the public to quickly capture and report details of situations as they find them using a simple and immediate smartphone app. The reports, which take seconds to submit, can include the location of incidents, descriptions, timestamps, and images.

Providing customer call center operators with access to map data from network engineering and operations can enhance customer experience and boost efficiency. By linking CRM systems to location data, companies can enable call-takers to identify a caller’s location and quickly check for active works or existing trouble tickets in the area.

Arming call-takers with this additional insight has dual benefits; it enables them to provide better information to the caller and, by linking the caller’s connection to existing tickets, it avoids raising duplicate tickets for the same event, which subsequently have to be resolved. This reduces overheads on both call-akers and field crews and makes follow-up communications with the caller easier and more reliable.