11th Annual Web Workshop, User Group & Boot Camp

Susan Gilbert, President, Apogee Interactive

Each year since founding Apogee in the early ‘90s, we host a Fall Workshop and User Group Meeting for our customers and prospects.  It’s a free, one-day meeting where we present cutting-edge, visionary speakers and invite our customers to share the latest-and-greatest of what’s working on the web. This year’s event plans to be the best yet. Mark your calendar and read on to see why.                                                                                                                              

Our annual Workshop, User Group Meeting and additional Boot Camp are designed to help our customers and prospects work more efficiently and effectively using the latest Internet capabilities -- and to exchange ideas among colleagues

 Photo: Web Worshop 2004

Here’s whats on tap this year:

Boot Camp – Tues. Oct. 11 (All Day)

Two years ago, by popular request, we expanded our annual format to include a one-day hands-on pre-workshop known as the Web Boot Camp. It covers in depth how to create and maintain a great utility website.  The boot camp does have a small registration fee ($195) to cover curriculum materials, handouts, catering, meeting space, AV and instructors. 

The Boot Camp works to raise the bar on utility websites, sharing the best techniques of site development that are appropriate for the utility business environment.   It‘s for anyone working on or with the utility’s website.  Our web designers, artists, and programmers will be teaching using a leading text book, and we will use some of the sites we’ve developed as our examples. 

But the focus of the day is helping you make your website great independent of how you get the job done.  It’s about ideas, sharing, techniques, and dos and don’ts.  Click to see the full agenda.

User Group Meeting – Tues. Oct. 11 (Late Afternoon)            

The User Group portion is a time we set aside to show new product developments and gather input as to what other enhancements our users would like to see made.  It’s from this list that we compose our 2006 Apogee production plan.

While we conduct some user group meetings via webinar throughout the year, this is a chance to meet face-to-face to share ideas and brainstorm new capabilities.  This year, we’ll have sessions on Tuesday afternoon concurrent with the Boot Camp on Apogee’s HomeEnergyCalculator™, the CommercialEnergyCalculator™, and Kid’s Korner. 

User group sessions are tremendously valuable to us. When our customers ask, “How’d you know I’d want it to do that?” we have to admit the ideas often come from user group sessions where our customers begin sentences with “I wish we could…” and “Wouldn’t it be cool if it could…” 

The User Group format enables our users’ needs and wants to meet the “can it be done” test, and then move  into production.  This gives us a production plan for the subsequent year that we know is responsive to what our users need. 

Attendees value these sessions, telling us the best part is hearing how other utilities are using the applications and sharing war stories with people facing similar challenges. 

Web Workshop – Wed. Oct. 12 (All Day)

The Web Workshop began as our way of saying, “Thank You for Your Business!” and for helping to evolve our products with your good ideas.   Therefore, we invite speakers who can cast light on important subjects and have vision to see beyond the routine of day-to-day operations. 

This year, by overwhelming popular demand from previous Web Workshops, Jeff Conklin (JD Power & Associates) and Andrew Heath (e-Source) return to share their recent work.  They set the stage for the later presentations you can see on the agenda. 

Our breakout sessions feature actual users speaking on specific problems they’ve faced and solved using their website.  In addition, we’ll share what new products and enhancements are underway.  This day is conducted as more of a conference-style meeting vs. the classroom training of the Boot Camp.  Click to see the full agenda.

Join Now Oct. 11 and 12! Register now.

“Wow! I didn’t know it could do that!”

Susan Gilbert, President, Apogee Interactive

During my recent visits with some of our Home and CommercialEnergyCalculator™ customers, I learned some surprising – and highly effective -- uses for these online tools. Everything from helping real estate agents and estimating deposits to calculating house rent and compiling a qualified email marketing list. Take a look at what your colleagues are doing and see what fits for your utility:

Assisting Real Estate Agents 

Are you allowed to reveal the energy bills of a particular home to a caller?  In Kentucky, it’s against the law to give this information to anyone but the owner of the account.  So when real estate agents called to get energy cost figures to help prospective buyers assess affordability, KU representatives felt bad they couldn’t provide the data.  For other utilities, it’s against the company’s code of ethics to release that information to anyone but the owner.

One call center rep at KU figured out that the Apogee Home Energy Calculator could at least get the agents in the right ball park. That’s all they were trying to accomplish anyway.  And real estate agents have all the information they need to run the computations, right from their MLS listings. The calculator only requests a few statistics like square footage, age of the home, number of occupants, and the like. Whether a utility rep uses the calculator to help callers or whether customers choose to run the comparisons themselves, it’s a perfect match for the home sales market.

Estimating Deposits for New Facilities

For utilities that require a deposit for establishing service, Apogee’s home and business calculators offer a fast estimating tool for new facilities.  With very few variables to enter, both calculators are surprisingly accurate at predicting the energy bills for the facility in question. That makes it fair and objective and is an easy way to determine a defensible number for a new home or business.

Calculating Rent 

Here’s a funny one.  Over the years we’ve found that one of the most popular changes calculator-users make to their homes is adding or reducing the number of occupants.  We never envisioned people would change the occupant number so frequently.  We just need to know how many people live there so we can most accurately predict energy usage. 

While we’ve wondered about it, this year I got a chance to find out why.  In one of our Usability Test Sessions, I observed a man set up his base home, reduce his heating setting, and then add one person to the home.  After his session ended, I asked him why he had added a person.  He said, “My son is thinking about moving home and I want to charge him some level of rent. This seemed a legitimate way of determining his fair share.” 

From similar discussions, we’ve learned why some people reduce the number. Most we asked said a child was preparing to move out and they wanted to get an idea of how much their bills might go down.  One woman told us, “It’s like I’m going to get a raise, and I’m trying to find out how much.”

Justifying a New Home

Did you know the calculator’s administrative tool allows you to view each and every session conducted, and enables you to see each and every change the user makes to their home? Reviewing this information can be very revealing.

In looking at one company’s usage history, we noticed many customers adding square footage to their older home, and then trying the larger square footage figure on a New Energy Efficient Home to see how the utility bills would vary.  Maybe they are trying to decide whether to add on or buy a new, larger home and they’re looking for justification from savings on utility bills? 

Conducting Market Research.

Many utility staff tell us they wish they had more information on customers’ interests, wants, and needs.  We also hear they’d like to have better feedback on their marketing initiatives, like how many people read that bill insert?  Or how many saw a particular ad.  Here’s some data available at your finger tips:  Any time you access the calculator’s administrative tool, you can clearly see the number who came to the calculator page, the number that tried a calculation (averaging about 70%) and the number of change scenarios they ran (averaging about 3). 

Qualified E-mail List Generator

Are you trying to accumulate customers’ e-mail addresses?  We hear that a lot as we talk with our users.  Some want to send e-mails to increase interest in online billing, others would like to stay better connected with the ability to send online newsletters full of useful links.  Whatever the reason, we are having some success with gathering them by asking on the calculator, “Want to e-mail this information to yourself?”  Perhaps some just want the documentation with all the beautiful charts and graphs for their records, or maybe the person wants to share the information with a spouse for review at a later date without having to go back online. 

Have you got an application to add? If so, we’d love to hear about it and share it with others. You can tell us live and get a quick refresher on how to use the calculator’s administrative tools. Join us for a FREE one-hour web conference "Innovative Uses for the HomeEnergyCalculator" on September 28th 2:00 PM Eastern .  Click here to register .

A Better Mousetrap Still Needs Marketing

Karen D. Morris, Marketing Manger

Marketing your website should begin long before you talk to a webmaster. The traditional thinking, “Build it and they will come” just won’t cut through today’s Internet clutter. First you must define what you want to accomplish with your website. Next, your understanding of your customers’ needs and expectations will help you to shape the features and attributes of your site. And finally, marketing and promotion will be the keys to a successful launch and continued use of your site.  Let’s look closer at the elements for website success.

Website Objectives

Clearly defining your objectives will allow you to articulate your desired end result to your webmaster. Whether you are creating a brand new website or preparing for your next generation redesign, getting clear on a few basic ideas upfront will not only save you money but also create a more effective end result.

Some primary objectives of a utility website often include:

• Corporate identity and branding
• Customer service and support 24/7
• Bill payment, billing options, service connect/disconnect orders
• Information on products, programs and services

Be sure to collaborate with your webmaster/IT staff from the very start. Open communication and brainstorming at this early stage will help ensure your site leverages all the latest in Internet programming and online techniques. And you’ll gain the benefit of team buy-in and ownership upfront.

Understanding your target market

By aligning your corporate objectives with your customers’ needs, you can easily expand your website’s value and appeal to include:

• A one-stop shop for company information and services
• Energy efficiency advice and reference materials
• Electrical safety education
• Interactive energy calculators to help customers better manage energy use
• A vehicle for opinion polling and market research
• School educational program support
• Community relations program support
• An outage reporting tool

When customers view your website as a valuable source of information, it fosters a trust that will in turn help reduce customer complaints and boost your corporate image. 

Marketing and Promotion

Once you’ve established your website’s objectives and matched it with the needs of your target market, your webmaster and designers can make it come alive. Now it’s time to for you to begin your promotion. Simply sending a notice saying “visit our website at www.yourutility.com” won’t create a rush to your website. Give them a reason to visit, to linger and to return day after day. It will take time and an investment in good content, but get customers engaged.

Apogee’s web content subscribers are now equipped with media kits that include many of the components for a successful launch -- press releases, icons, advertisements, articles, brochures, on-hold messages and much more. But don’t stop there!

Here are a few more ideas:

• Offer incentives, $10 off your bill to those who sign up for online bill pay
• Contests work well, “Visit our site and win a dozen free light bulbs.”
• Provide your link to local real estate offices, county and/or municipal sites as well as the chamber of commerce.
• Always provide your web address on all printed material and company vehicles.
• Offer a free online service such as a free energy audit. Apogee’s HomeEnergyCalculator™ is a perfect fit.
• Direct callers to your site with your on-hold messages.
• Have your CSRs direct people to the site for more information; have them walk customers through the site to build their comfort level.

A utility’s website is one of the best opportunities to convey a positive corporate image, reinforce branding and provide 24/7 customer service. It becomes the “face” of your company and an essential customer service arm.

By understanding your customer’s expectations and needs, you can build a website that not only maintains its value but increases ROI. Thoughtful construction of the site followed with a consistent promotional calendar will increase web activity and encourage repeat traffic. Then make enhancements and improvements on a regular basis based on customer feedback. Strategic planning, exceptional execution and continued refinements are the hallmarks of a successful website.

Learn more about marketing your website, how to increase customer satisfaction and the key elements of a successful utility website at Apogee’s Boot Camp & Web Workshop Oct. 11th & 12th.

BillingInsight™ Makes High Bill Calls a Breeze

Eric Watson, Business Unit Director

When a residential customer calls with a high bill concern, how can you accurately address the concern, establish your company as the end-use energy cost expert, and provide suggestions for reducing the energy bill? When your customers turn to you for answers, what tools can your customer service representatives (CSRs) immediately use to ensure customer satisfaction, achieve first-call resolution and keep costs to a minimum? Apogee has a new product that can make high bill calls a breeze.                                                                         

Light-Touch Billing System Integration Makes it Possible

We’ve increasingly heard that it’s becoming harder and harder to achieve the dual goals of maximum customer service at minimum costs. Working closely with our clients, Apogee has answered the call with BillingInsight™ -- an intuitive, online tool that can be integrated with the utility’s CIS/billing system and can typically be operational for CSRS within about 3 weeks.

Browser-Based Tool Analyzes and Generates Answers in Seconds

BillingInsight is an easy-to-use, browser-based tool that provides CSRs with instant answers to the questions customers have when they call asking, “Why is my bill so high?”  The key to making BillingInsight (BI) work is integration with the billing/CIS system.  This integration is a “light touch,” requiring only that a limited set of billing history information is output to BI when requested by the CSR.  The CSR asks the caller for the answers to a customizable set of questions related to how the caller uses energy.  These questions typically include how big is the house, how many people live there, and how many refrigerators are there in the home.  The answers to these questions are passed to the BillingInsight system along with the billing history information. 

BillingInsight Taps Household Data, Weather Data, and 12-Month Billing History

BillingInsight takes the customer’s answers and their billing history, constructs billing cycle-coincident heating and cooling degree-day information, and performs a series of sophisticated statistical analyses to determine the relationship between the individual customer’s energy usage and changes in temperature.  Once this correlation is determined, it is used to present the CSR with a set of charts and tables that show the energy usage, by major end-use, for the caller’s account for the most recent twelve billing cycles.  Any unexplained energy usage is clearly identified and the system provides the CSR with the appropriate questions to ask the caller, if a problem is found, based on the monthly pattern of the unexplained energy usage.

Faster Answers, More Satisfaction at Less Cost

BillingInsight significantly reduces the confusion and the amount of time it typically takes to resolve a high-bill concern.  The interface is intuitive, the information is very accurate, and the CSR can automatically email the caller a report at the end of the process.  The system is currently deployed at several energy companies and Apogee is monitoring CSR feedback to ensure maximum performance of BillingInsight. Contact Eric Watson at 770-270-6517 or ewatson@apogee.net to see if this system will work for you. Look to this space in the next issue of Apogee Interactions for a summary of what we hear from the “trenches!”

Gilbert Cartoon   

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