It doesn’t matter – if you are in a Business-to-Business (B2B) environment or Business-to-Customer (B2C) environment, the only thing that guarantees a flourishing business is – a Satisfied Customer.
When Customers are happy, they return and continue to use your services. Customer retention is not guaranteed by a good product or service, but there is a need to connect with the customer at a much deeper level, the overall Customer Experience is the KEY!
With technology bridging the information gap, customers are more aware, more tech savvy and more demanding than ever. They want everything, instantly.
Companies are gearing up to provide unprecedented services to their customers. Customer Data, Usage Patterns, Customer Life-cycle and how a product or service ‘fits-in’ to facilitate a Customer Lifestyle is what all companies are eyeing. This puts the Customer in the Limelight and with everyone pushing boundaries to enhance Customer Experience, it has become a vital part of any providers win strategy.
Missing out on any aspect of a Customers profile can be a serious set-back. Managing utility companies’ customer information is a complex and tedious job. Providers need to be competitive, justify utility rates, provide uninterrupted services and maintain loads of Customer Data. Analyzing this data to gather customer trends and formulate customised service offers gives providers an edge over competition.
More companies are focusing on a 360 degree Customer Centric Strategy. A customer is pampered by providing not only desired information at their fingertips but more value through Analytics, helping customers project their utility bills, automate payments, quick logging and resolution of complaints to name a few.
Extending above benefits to the customer doesn’t come easy though. Many touch points need to be integrated, information flow from various sources needs to be synchronized and made readily available to the support team. Gathering, Storing, Preserving and Presenting data can be a costly affair and companies make huge investments to make this flawless.
Meters are the main source of income for providers. Maximizing returns against a meter is a three way process.
- Improve billing and collection against current meters.
- Offer additional customized services to increase revenues.
- Cut operational costs to maximize profits.
Numbers are not only important for above reason but also to make informed and wise future strategy decisions.
With cost of commodities constantly rising, Providers need to ensure steady and increasing revenues while curbing costs.
With above said, it makes all the sense to have the most current information readily available with Providers decision makers. Unfortunately, with a fragmented IT infrastructure with most of the providers, it is not possible. Many departments work in isolation, using different tools and solutions. In such a scenario, information is not synchronized, is available in bits and pieces, is not automated, updated or secured. It becomes almost impossible to piece together the numbers needed to make an informed and justified decision.
When budgets, forecasts, projections, milestones and targets are set in the absence of factual numbers, the decisions are prone to failure. The risk elevates to a high level and mitigation becomes almost impossible.
In context of importance of Customer Care and Billing, with so many loop holes, it is utmost important for providers to put in place an integrated and comprehensive system which not only caters to the unique needs of the provider but also those of the customers. This empowers utility providers to have the most current and updated information from across the whole system, starting from meters to utilisation, billing and collection to reconciliation and unparalleled customer services through various touch-points, using the power of an integrated solution.
Yes, this is a really good question? You must be interested in such a solution if;
- Your Utility Operations are focused on maximising return from all meters.
- Since Utility operations have become more legislated and complex; you feel the systems that support them are harder to secure, manage and make compliant.
- Your IT systems were acquired over time and are now fragmented; you also have legacy systems that don’t adapt easily.
- You’re worried about protecting valuable customer data, streamlining processes and adapting to change, with limited budget and resources.
- You can’t tailor offers to individual customers’ habits; revenue and growth are at risk.
- You don’t have the complete system and information visibility which you have always wanted, and still wishing for.
- You tried everything to control manual data entry but it’s still inaccurate and error-prone; you couldn’t control access, ensure security or assure compliance.
- You tried combining solutions but each solution had different requirements so updating, maintaining and co-ordinating them was complex; you couldn’t ensure security or compliance.
- You tried on-boarding general utility integrators but they didn’t understand Utilities – and you didn’t have time to train them or help them design a system to suit you.
This posts another challenge for providers, to source the right solution. Most Customer Care solutions work in silos, delivering one part or some modules while lacking others. Some products are not mature enough to handle large scale operations; some use multiple modules to cater for different organizational needs and thus inflating the cost of operations.
How can a Provider be sure to source “Just the Right” Solution? Well, you can easily make this assessment based on below checklist. If a solution matches below criterion, you are pretty much on the right footing.
- Solution is built from the ground up for Utilities with decades of experience within this niche domain.
- Solution includes Utilities-specific modules to streamline customer care, billing and revenue.
- Solution is a pre-built solution for Utilities for IT, operations and management teams, which includes options like GIS connection and a Mobile Application.
- Solution pulls data from disparate sources into one centralised repository and provides a single, current view of all data for individual customers, providing unparalleled insight for business decision-makers to make accurate plans and offers.
- Solution supports on-premise, to provide unequaled flexibility from the start. When migrated to the cloud, the solution delivers extra convenience, ease of management and economy. Once implemented, your business users won’t need much IT support; they can update the systems to accommodate change, without calling on you for help.
- Solution comes with built-in standard analytics and reports designed specifically for Utilities, with drill-down to critical detail. As all Utilities data is maintained centrally, all analytics and reports are accurate, so your business managers won’t have to worry about missing or incorrect details.
- It is a complete solution for managing billing and customer care for Utilities providers. It is pre-built and designed on best industry processes, so there are no implementation delays, or unexpected professional services or custom development to fill gaps.
- The Solution is designed for use by your business users as well, not just your IT team. After brief initial training, your business users can run these platforms, and adapt themselves when changes arise, without calling on your IT team for help. This lets you focus on key priorities rather than routine business processes.
- The Solution providers implementation process includes help with managing change. This includes training to use the solution plus best practice processes and procedures for providers to ensure easy, comfortable, willing uptake by Utilities staff.
Instead of struggling with manual meter reading and bill calculations, slow and inaccurate billing and low returns per meter, such a solution lets you automate your processes and tailor offers to each customer. For senior Utility executives, this means faster billing, higher customer satisfaction and higher returns per meter.
The Solution is built on a mature Utilities Customer Care and Billing platform which was designed for utility providers. This provides the framework and the solution provides the specific functionality and granularity for senior Finance and IT executives, to streamline processes, enhance customer service and cut operational costs.
If this seems interesting, Contact Us to streamline your Customer Care and Utility Billing System.
