Vol. 14 June. 2006
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Vol. 14 June. 2006 |
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American Electric Power Selects APOGEE’s Online Customer Self-Service Home and Business Suites
American Electric Power, one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving over 5 million customers in 11 states, has selected Apogee’s HomeEnergySuite™ and CommercialEnergySuite™ to provide enhanced online customer self-service. This new offering, available on the websites of the seven AEP operating companies, is designed to give customers guidance in managing their energy costs and to help them make good energy decisions.
Offering self-service applications for a utility has several benefits beyond the obvious reduction in transaction costs. For one, putting what customers are looking for on the website gives people a reason to go there. This increases traffic to the site and gives the utility an opportunity to invite customers to participate in their programs, sign up for online bill pay and a myriad of other options. “It’s a chance to have a positive interaction with customers at a very low cost,” says APOGEE president, Susan Gilbert. Managers at AEP had watched the evolution of commercially-available, online self-service applications for many years and had a long list of criteria for any application they would use to have to meet. It had to be user-friendly, deliver accurate information, and allow customers to see how much they would save by making simple changes to their homes or businesses. In addition, any application they selected had to produce a solid business case.
To help analyze the financial impacts and answer the business case questions, APOGEE built an online business case analyzer. Now available on APOGEE’s website to anyone interested in creating a business case the simple tool is actually fun to use. You make selections with your mouse by clicking and dragging a sliding button along a scale. As you make changes to your assumptions (e.g., number of customers, % who call, average cost of handling a call) a colorful bar chart changes before your eyes, showing the dollars saved by area (e.g., savings from reduced calls to call center, savings from reduced on-site energy audits). Check it out at http://demo.apogee.net/tools/HESBCAGT200K.htm
In addition to the cost savings, another key aspect of any application AEP would make available on their websites was its ability to make a positive impact on customer satisfaction. Studies show that customers are coming to expect self-service that enables them to get the information or service they want when they want it, not when it’s necessarily convenient for the utility. Apogee’s EnergySuites include extensive, interactive energy resource libraries to provide relevant energy-use insights. These materials include animations and beautiful illustrations that make it fun and interesting to learn. The centerpiece tools of the suites are the HomeEnergyCalculator™ and CommercialEnergyCalculator™. These quantify the effect for users that commonly considered measures like upgrading the HVAC system or changing temperature settings will have on their monthly and annual energy bills. Both home and business calculators feature an engaging user interface and are powered by the sophisticated energy-use analysis engine, AuditMation™ Energy Analysis System (AMES). Customers are quickly able to get remarkably accurate results with few inputs because AMES does all the heavy lifting based on the few data points from the customer. As a result, 70 percent of customers who access the calculator complete an analysis. In fact, the average customer evaluates three different energy-saving scenarios along with their associated dollar savings. By offering these tools, the utility empowers their customers to take more control over their energy use and costs. APOGEE welcomes AEP as a new user. They join more than 200 other utilities offering APOGEE’s energy efficiency applications to their customers.
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JD Power Returns to Keynote Apogee 12th Annual Workshop We are delighted to announce that Jeff Conklin of JD Power will and Associates be back by popular demand as the keynote speaker at our October Innovative Online Solutions Workshop. It, along with our User Group Meetings and Web Boot Camp, is taking place from October 17th through 19th, 2006.
Presenting findings from the JD Power 2006 Trends in Utility Customer Satisfaction Survey, Jeff will add a special emphasis on how websites and offering web-based self-service affects customer satisfaction. At last year’s event, Jeff shared how their research showed the number of utility customers visiting their utility’s website has almost doubled since 2000. We can look forward to hearing an update on that trend. And he’ll give us an update on other intriguing findings like how customers value good customer service over price, a trend that last year had shown a steady increase since 1999.
Tuesday, Oct 17th User Group Meetings. As our long-time customers know, we evolve our products based on their input. Throughout the year, Apogee conducts user group meetings by webinar. But once a year, we ask our active customers to bring their good ideas in person, roll up their sleeves, and really engage with us in producing the next generation of capabilities they would like to see our products offer. This list forms our production backlog and as developers have time between custom projects, we work to enable these enhancements, which are offered to all of our customers at no additional cost. This year, we’ll have 1 to 2 hour sessions devoted to these applications:
Tuesday, Oct 17th Customer Appreciation Dinner Cruise We also invite our attendees to join us for our Annual Customer Appreciation dinner cruise on Lake Lanier following the User Group Meetings. This is the evening prior to the Online Solutions Workshop, so we also invite anyone coming to the Wednesday workshop who can get in early enough on Tuesday to join us for some R&R on the Lake.
Wednesday, Oct 18th 12th Annual Innovative Online Solutions Workshop is our one day event where we bring in outside speakers intermingled with our own to share best practices, cutting-edge ideas, and the latest thinking on energy issues, customer service, customer satisfaction and self-service via the web. This year, in addition to Jeff Conklin, we have Dennis Smith coming from Chartwell to share results of their research studies on web-based self-service, and Chris Bond from Usability Concepts, LLC to address the latest in usability studies. These outside speakers will be joined by our visionary CEO, Joel Gilbert, P.E., our dynamic EVP of Strategic Alliances, John Laun, and several of our key product managers and strategic partners.
3rd Annual Web Boot Camp
With its military theme, the Web Boot camp is a fun mix of education and training drills designed for anyone in a utility with responsibility for the website. Based on the well-founded curriculum in Jakob Nielsen’s respected textbook, “Designing Web
Register online today! www.apogee.net/events
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BillingInsights™ “Takes the Guesswork out of Handling Billing Inquiries”
The high bill complaint call is often the most frustrating exchange between the customer and the utility. How it is handled can have a lasting impression on the customer and have an impact on customer satisfaction. At a growing number of utilities across the country, CSRs are achieving amazing results using BillingInsights™, the latest in cutting-edge software that takes the guesswork out of resolving customer inquiries. BillingInsights is an Expert System built on “learning” software that uses techniques similar to those used by voice and handwriting recognition applications. It instantly analyzes billing history, weather impacts, rates, days of service, and related events.
With one mouse click, it reviews the data, interprets relationships, correlates patterns and uses an expert system to prompt reps with likely causes of the customer’s concern, enabling them to resolve it quickly, accurately, and with greater confidence than ever before possible. Recently presented as a case study at a major US utility conference, the software is generating quite a buzz among customer care managers and call center personnel. According to APOGEE executive vice president, John Laun, “Everyone is interested in how it is proving to cut call time, save money and increase customer satisfaction, but just as important is the fact that it is improving the confidence and comfort level of the CSRs handling the calls." More About BillingInsights BillingInsights (BI) is a web-based application that uses APOGEE’s powerful AuditMation™ Energy Analysis System and a customer’s account billing history to provide the user (either a customer service representative or a customer) with the tools to quickly and accurately address the customer’s high bill concerns. BillingInsights presents the results of its analyses to the user within a browser window. The interface is highly user-friendly and is designed to convey a substantial amount of information in an intuitive fashion. And, because BillingInsights is browser-based, no additional software is required to be installed on the user’s computer.
The software pulls the customer’s billing history and asks either the CSR to gather the answers to a few simple questions about the home from the customer. In self-service mode, the customer enters their answers directly into a form that appears when the BI system is activated. Upon completion of the analyses, the results are presented to the user (CSR or customer). The results are presented in a series of charts and tables. The default chart is most often a presentation of end-use consumption, by billing cycle, for either kWh and therms or dollars. There are also charts that present an annual summary of energy usage and costs accessible in the interface
Very often the cause of the high bill concern is weather related. In these cases, BI provides the user with tools based on billing cycle coincident temperatures and heating/cooling degree days. This allows the user to better understand the actual billing cycle weather in the context of the previous year and the thirty-year average. The BI charts and tables allow the user to discuss changes in end-use consumption caused by changes in weather.
At the end of the session, the user can request an email report that includes all of the charts and tables generated during the analysis of that customer’s energy usage. This email report provides the energy company with an excellent opportunity to provide the customer with additional energy efficiency information and links to pages on the company’s website for further information. If necessary, the CSR can forward the report to the customer via e-mail or US mail.
Superior Statistics for Savings and Satisfaction BillingInsights clearly saves money for utilities in two ways. In its CSR-facing mode, with its data-flagging and intelligent scripting, BI is proving to reduce the length of time required to resolve a customer call. One major US IOU confirms adding this sort of information capability for their CSRs doubled their first call resolution from 32% to 64% and saved $1M the first year. In addition, in its customer-facing, self-service mode, BI can eliminate the need for the call in the first place. “Quite often, customers on hold waiting for a CSR to answer their billing questions are online, sitting in front of a computer screen. If the outgoing message lets them know BillingInsights is available, they may hang up as they answer their own questions quickly and easily,” Laun says. “Doing this not only cuts cost, but impacts satisfaction as customers are happier to have control of solving their own problem when they want answers.”
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Cobb EMC Jazzes up Energy Education for School Kids
Cobb EMC has unveiled a fresh, newly redesigned website featuring the “Kid’s Energy Zone” provided by APOGEE Interactive, Inc. The new website and children’s energy education materials are part of Cobb EMC’s mission to deliver reliable electricity while providing members with helpful information on safety and energy efficiency.
APOGEE’s content for the Kid’s Energy Zone was chosen by Cobb EMC after a review of other available options. According to Mark Justice, Director of Education and Community Relations, “We liked what Apogee had to offer because the content included electrical safety, energy efficiency, fundamentals of power generation and distribution. Plus, the site has child-friendly animations, games, coloring pages, check lists, and puzzles.”
According to APOGEE president Susan Gilbert, the firm has three primary goals with kid-focused online applications: “First, keep them fun so they are engaging for the age group. We compete with video games, so pictures have to move, calculators have to compute and games have to be engaging,” notes Gilbert. “Second, utilities care that the materials contain the kind of content they want to communicate, like safety and energy efficiency, and that “Our teacher advisory panel keeps us on our toes with what will work for them,” says Gilbert, a former teacher herself. “They stress to our curriculum developers that if it’s difficult to navigate the materials, hard to find the website, or tricky to locate the correct answers to workbooks questions, teachers will not be inclined to use the application.” Therefore, our focus is on interactivity to keep the kids interested and usability for the teachers, instructors, or parents whose needs we are working to serve. An additional advantage of having teachers use our website is giving parents of students a reason to come to the Cobb EMC site. “If a 3rd grader surveys their home for energy wasters and enters them onto a checklist in the Kid’s Energy Zone, we hope that parents will bookmark the site, perhaps notice they can pay their bill on line or discover the other programs and services we offer,” explains Justice. APOGEE’s energy education materials, targeting school-age kids, are one of the firm’s most popular offerings. “Cobb EMC joins over 200 utilities nationwide that have added this educational feature to their websites, says Gilbert. “However, their version includes some innovative new features including original sound tracks composed and recorded expressly for the various areas of the site. These enhancements make this application a little different from any other we have done, but Cobb EMC has a reputation for thinking outside of the box, raising the bar, and trying new ideas in the interest of increasing customer satisfaction while expanding their community involvement.” Formed in 1938, Cobb Electric Membership Corporation (Cobb EMC) started as an electric utility with 489 residential members and 14 commercial accounts. With over 188,000 members and growing, Cobb EMC is one of the largest of Georgia's 42 EMCs and one of the largest of the nation's over 900 EMCs.
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©2006 APOGEE Interactive, Inc.
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Like so many other industries, utilities are increasingly making it possible for customers to find answers and perform transactions on their provider’s website. What’s happened over the past 10 years in airlines, and over the past 20 in banking, is starting to take hold with utilities. It’s rare for anyone to call a travel agent anymore. People search the web for the best fares, travel times and destinations, eliminating the need to interact with a person and dramatically cutting transaction costs in the travel industry. And when did you last see a bank teller? For most, it’s now only when something unusual happens, not every week to deposit a pay check or get some cash. 
Usability,” Apogee’s practicing developers, webmasters, artists, and writers share tips and traps on having a great website. We operate within a framework of topics, but participants are surveyed prior to attending to assure as many of their specific needs as possible are met. Topics Include:
