Web Workshop To Reveal Trends, Site Makeovers on Oct. 12

Content is still king. Yet attractive graphics, intuitive navigation, valuable interactivity and easy self-service all help create a highly effective website. Experience extreme makeovers of two websites to see what really works at Apogee’s Annual Web Workshop in Atlanta on Oct. 12. Plus, hear the latest industry trends in residential customer satisfaction, Internet-based customer contact and utility website evolution according to Apogee, Platts, Chartwell Inc. and the American Customer Satisfaction Index – during our FREE, one-day workshop.

Apogee’s 10th Annual Web Workshop & Users Group Meeting

Once again, Apogee is hosting a full-day Web Workshop & Users Group meeting for free on Oct. 12 at its headquarters location in metro Atlanta. This year’s lineup promises to be the best yet, featuring a blend of keynote speakers, breakout sessions and utility panel discussions.

New this year are two Extreme Makeover sessions where Apogee’s team of website strategists, designers and programmers will critique two selected websites in smaller breakout sessions, moving through the sites step by step to demonstrate proven techniques and tricks to increase the sites’ overall impact and effectiveness.

Here’s our Agenda, for 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Oct. 12.

Space is limited, so please register now online or call Karen Morris at 770-270-6501 by Oct. 8. We hope you can also join us for a dinner cruise at Lake Lanier on Oct. 11 Please RSVP by Oct. 6th See you there!

 

Bringing Employees Onboard With Co-op Express

By Paul Wood, President and CEO

Georgia Electric Membership Corp.

Electric membership cooperatives take great pride in the fact that we still operate like a family. We worked together like family to bring electricity to rural America back in the 1930s with President Franklin Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Administration. And while we number nearly 1,000 coops nationwide today, we’re still a close-knit, caring network of professionals dedicated to serving our member/owners.

Like so many other businesses today, however, we face the challenge of maintaining this sense of family, technical skill and heritage in the midst of a rapidly retiring workforce. One of our missions at the Georgia Electric Membership Corp. (GEMC) is to make available the needed training to our member cooperatives.  So this fall, we’re launching a new online initiative to help our members meet the challenge of a changing workforce and marketplace.

We call it Co-op Express – an online, training course designed to help our members foster the sense of pride, heritage and culture unique to cooperatives – faster and more cost-effectively among their workforce. This one-hour course will be accessible from our website so our member co-op employees can take it at their convenience -- anytime, anywhere and at their own pace.

In the past, our staff would travel across the state several times a year to conduct “new employee orientations.” These one-day sessions gave new hires a broad brush of electric cooperative history, operations and current issues. But it might take an employee six months or more to attend one of these scheduled sessions.

These classroom sessions also took a lot of staff and employee time, travel and expense – resources that seem more precious and pressed with each passing year. That’s why we worked with Apogee to create an online course to accomplish the same quality of training online. And we’ll accomplish it at a net cost savings for our members and GEMC compared to the traditional class.

Co-op Express covers all of the essentials: cooperative history and principles; the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity; GEMC services; and a summary of current issues facing electric cooperatives. We provided much of the content and photographic images and Apogee provided the overall graphics design, animations, quizzing/testing functionalities, narration, and other instructional design techniques to bring it the course to life for our students.

Now, a new employee can take this course within hours or days of coming onboard with the co-op. The course serves as a jump-start and supplement to whatever on-the-job orientation the cooperative regularly conducts. Like its name implies, Co-op Express just helps do it faster, providing the employee with a huge leg up on the amount of new information they are expected to absorb in their new position. And just as important, it gives them a first-hand look at the heritage and history of America’s electric cooperative family.

Integration Key to Enhancing User Experience

By Eric Watson, Director of Interactive Customer Solutions

It’s been fascinating to observe and participate in the rapid evolution of Web-based products and services in the past decade – especially within the utility industry.  Utilities were early adopters of Web-based products and services and quickly sought to use them to improve customer care and reduce costs. Though change continues unabated in the way utilities take advantage of the Internet, one area of particular note can be found in the integration of Web-based products and services. 
                                                                                                                             

Residential Energy Solutions Suite Offers Enhanced User Experience Through Integration

Companies that embraced the Internet early on have realized numerous benefits.  Costs have fallen as customers in increasing numbers turn to the utility Website to pay their bills, seek answers to service-related questions, and educate themselves about energy. 

However, many Websites, with utilities not excluded, are little more than a collection of hyperlinks to assorted pages where various functions can be performed or information can be found.  Enhancements in online navigation techniques have made considerable improvements to this situation but the integration of related products and services is not merely a navigation issue.

Integration Presents Tools & Info at Precise Moment of Interest

Apogee’s Residential Energy Solutions Suite (ResSuite) offers an example of how integrating commonly purposed online products leads to a vastly improved customer experience. 

The ResSuite integrates:

• an online audit
• energy savings tips
• quick calculators for lighting and appliances
• an extensive library of residential energy systems information
• an application to locate area home improvement vendors
• and the industry’s leading energy education site designed for younger users.

 At the heart of the ResSuite is the energy calculator.  The calculator allows customers to quickly model their base house and explore the cost impact of making changes to energy consumption behaviors. 

The integration of the calculator directly with the library of energy information enables the customer to access relevant information from within the calculator, at the precise point in time they are likely to be most interested. 

The same notion applies to energy savings tips.  Within the ResSuite such tips are context driven and appear at the exact moment a customer would be most interested.  The integration of the tips with the library allows customers to delve deeper into information regarding savings opportunities without navigating away to another area of the Website. 

The lighting and appliance sub-calculators provide the customer with the means to more fully explore the specific savings associated with making changes to the end-uses of energy they consume daily.

The energy calculator and the library are fully linked to the Vendor Locator application.  The basic premise of Vendor Locator is to provide customers with a means to easily identify companies that provide energy-related products and services.  If, for example, a customer uses the calculator and finds that substantial savings can be realized by making a change in their water heater, and the library educates them all about water heating options, the Vendor Locator allows them to find folks in their area that sell and install water heaters.

Easy and Immediate Access Enhances Experience

The overall experience for the customer is seamless accessibility of intelligently integrated tools and information within a single unifying interface.  This quantum leap in the way the information is organized and accessed yields substantial customer satisfaction.

The past decade has seen Web-based products and services evolve at a dizzying pace.  The next decade promises much more of the same and energy companies can be counted on to stay in the forefront. You can also count on Apogee to be right there, helping create and innovate online solutions for its energy clients.

Want to learn more? Register for our Webconference Nov. 3, 2004 2:00 pm Eastern

Theresa Lavoie Joins Apogee Team

We are pleased to announce Theresa Lavoie has joined the Apogee team. A longtime energy advisor to utilities and director of consumer energy education programs in Connecticut and New York, Theresa will lead Apogee’s client service and business development activities in the Northeast from her office in Litchfield, Conn., located between Boston and New York City.                                              

Meet Theresa Lavoie

“Theresa shares our passion for energy education and customer satisfaction,” said Susan Gilbert, President and Co-founder of Apogee Interactive, Inc. “Her expertise in energy education, conservation and load management, and Web-based applications, will provide added value to our client services and product offerings,” she said.

Theresa brings more than 20 years of energy and utility experience to her role at Apogee, beginning in the 1980s as a manager of statewide energy audit programs in Connecticut and New York. Next, she directed statewide energy research and planning for the Connecticut Association for Community Action and served on the Governor’s Energy Advisory Committee.

She later joined Orange & Rockland Utilities to manage its Conservation and Consumer Affairs Department, and then worked for an energy service company where she directed the national operations of its electric, gas and water company efficiency programs.

Most recently, Theresa served as Chief Executive Officer of The Resource Link, a business and energy management consulting firm she founded to design energy efficiency and productivity programs for electric, gas and water utilities – many of which involved Internet applications as a part of their program implementation.  In addition, the company created and designed a comprehensive K-5 energy efficiency curriculum and environmental brochure series, both of which are being distributed nationally.

Theresa holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science at Southern Connecticut State University and is working towards her MBA . She also has earned certificates in total quality management and team building from the Juran Institute and a certificate from the Burke Institute in customer satisfaction principles and survey development.

Here’s how to contact Theresa:

Theresa Lavoie, 1-800-322-9934, tlavoie@apogee.net

Gilbert - Caption This   

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