Many utilities are rolling out Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and are committing millions and collectively billions of dollars to do so. The challenge for utilities is not whether to roll out AMI, but rather how to turn AMI’s new capabilities into positive customer experiences. AMI can create opportunities for new billing plans; energy management and load balancing programs and improved customer care around billing, usage, consumption, activation and repair. All of these capabilities can result in a positive customer experience, but operations and customer care groups must determine what changes they must make to exploit AMI’s best capabilities.
Currently, most back offices are not prepared to handle the increased data volume AMI will drive. They may also lack the billing, customer care and remote management systems they need. If utility providers fail to assess the scope of AMI’s impact on operations and the customer experience with AMI introduction is poor, they may risk run-ins with state PUCs at the end of the day. AMI, however, can and should provide an extremely positive experience for customers and help providers to engage with them more actively. The Impacts of AMI’s Introduction Simply stated, it won’t be possible to leverage AMI’s positive qualities if the right support isn’t in place in the back office. One of the first challenges AMI brings is a massive increase in network connections to every location. These connections are required to collect the data that smart meters generate and to communicate with meters for remote management.
AMI can enable real-time connectivity to smart meters at all times. That kind of connectivity, which will make more sense as energy management advances, would require as many simultaneous connections as meters at all times. By today’s standards, that’s a massive network requirement. Moving to an hourly read would reduce that network requirement, perhaps by a factor of 30. Making the appropriate network decision will depend on how a utility wants to take advantage of smart meters and AMI’s reporting capabilities. Factors such as back up networking; back up power; processes for network outages or instances where a device cannot be reached; and validation that all devices are reporting and reporting accurately must be considered as well. Though somewhat complex, the benefit of all of this networking will be improved monitoring, management and control for every customer location.
Data Volume Explodes
AMI meters will collect and store data based on any interval a provider wants. The more granular the intervals, the more data records every device will produce, which has a multiplicative and potentially exponential effect on data volume. For example, hourly readings would mean 720 instances per month where the meter creates a record. 15 minute intervals would result in 2,880 instances per month, and so on. Ultimately it will be possible to collect information related not only to overall consumption, but also environmental factors, appliance usage, and diagnostic information. This expanded data set could add yet another multiplying variable to the data equation.
Remote Management is Introduced
Automated activation and disconnect is another capability set AMI will introduce. It has the potential to eliminate a great percentage of truck rolls, thus lowering cost and speeding service activation for customers. It also allows for rapid response to fraudulent use and bad debt, enabling service to be cut off in real-time from a remote system. The utility has to determine whether its existing systems can support functions like automated activation and whether these functions can be integrated directly to a call center desktop application. It is also important to understand the amount of new functionality and integration that will be required to put all of the right tools or controls in the right places.
Because AMI puts a smart meter at every customer location, it should enable visibility of outage status to the back office for each location. During outages, this kind of visibility can improve call routing based on the likely call type, and pinpoint likely points of failure on the system to expedite the dispatch of repair crews by identifying which meters are recording usage or receiving power and which are not. Utilities should not have to rely any longer on customer calls to identify and diagnose an outage, but rather should be able to reach out to customer proactively to provide repair or emergency information.
For load balancing purposes, a Management Maintenance System could provide detailed pictures, for example, of which locations or regions are consuming the most power and at what times of day. This can improve prioritization of investment in infrastructure to drive reliability. Eventually it should also enable detailed consumption reporting within each location to support more advanced energy management.
To realize these types of possibilities, AMI is an enabler, but the back office needs to have the right tools in place to translate AMI data into useful information and to access device capabilities for remote monitoring and control. The range of new possibilities AMI introduces – including everything from new equipment to new billing plans – is a lot for a provider and for customers to take on all at once. Any strategy should include an analysis of what AMI can bring to the table; what progression makes sense for introduction; what process and systems changes are needed for support; and how customers will be oriented with them for a positive experience.
Customer Care Gains Responsibilities
As an increasing percentage of AMI’s capabilities are leveraged, there will be a growing impact on customer care operations. A significant increase in call volume can be expected simply due to smart meter installations. As these translate into more sophisticated billing plans and consumption management programs, customers will have more questions and will typically pick up the phone to have them answered. AMI is likely to continue to increase average call volumes to contact centers as it continually enables new capabilities. Because these calls will be somewhat non-standard in nature, their average handle times could be significantly longer at the outset as well. This volume must be handled, but alternate channels such as the Internet should be used to educate customers proactively and answer as many questions as possible before having them pick up the telephone. Given this alternate channel, many customers will choose not to call the contact center first.
The new range of rate plans AMI data can enable is exciting for the business, but it will add tremendous complexity to legacy CIS systems. There is some risk of creating billing problems or inaccuracies. Confusion with new plans or bills can also lead to customer complaints and spark issues with state PUCs. Though extreme outcomes, what they suggest is that customer care and customer education are real priorities in AMI introduction. Customers are going to be asked to adapt to new ways of thinking about their energy usage and their interactions with their provider, and no change – no matter how beneficial for all involved - is ever simple or comfortable without repeated and proactive information and encouragement.
To educate customers, contact centers will need education on things like new rate plans and energy management initiatives. Agents will need to learn how to coach customers on taking advantage of special rates based on conservation incentives. New responsibilities may also move to the contact center, such as remote activation and disconnection, proactive outreach to customers during outages, and other possibilities. The question is not whether the contact center can handle it, but rather how the contact center will handle it.
Examining Operations to Prepare for AMI
To move from today’s operations practices to those that work best with AMI, a utility needs to ask the right kinds of questions, based on its AMI strategy, to determine its requirements. The critical areas that are likely to impact customers’ experiences with AMI introduction include customer care; remote management; billing and rating as well as the relationship among all three.
Customer Care
As mentioned earlier, the first two questions are how much of an increase in call volume and handle times to expect and whether the contact center can manage that level of volume. It is also necessary to examine whether the current agents in the call center are sophisticated enough to handle their new roles. If they are up to the task, how much new training they will require? AMI’s capabilities can help to support contact centers agents. So, questions such as whether tools like IVRs are in place that can help automate outbound calling for outage or emergency reporting are critical.
It is also necessary to assess whether CIS systems can handle the new volume and types of data about the customer and make them accessible in ways that matter to the contact center agent. Can the CIS manage new rate plans and product offerings? How about new types of information about the customer that might be collected, like details on their daily consumption and household appliances? Additionally, what is the strategy that will drive customer queries to the web and what functionality customers will want to see there is critical to determine and a significant undertaking in and of itself.
Remote Management
As discussed, remote management capabilities are effective when they are made accessible to the right people within the right systems and processes. A utility must ask whether its CIS system, or another customer management application, can integrate remote management capabilities, like automated activation and disconnect. Similarly, is there a work management system that can take in AMI data and produce a live map of active and inactive locations and optimize outage troubleshooting and repair response? This information needs to be provided real time to the back and front office for better customer communication.Further, it may become necessary to install systems or processes that can validate that meters are reporting accurately while assuring that collected AMI data, billing and consumption management are all consistent in their view of each customer. As usage collection becomes dependent on the network, it may become increasingly important to validate billing accuracy. Billing inaccuracy can lead rapidly to a negative customer experience and complaints to the PUC.
Billing and Rating
Billing and rating will be impacted significantly because of both the volume and types of usage data that will become available. More billing variables, or more variables that drive discounts, translate into far more complex billing requirements. The first question is whether the billing system can even handle the new volume of data. If so, can it also handle rating for things like tiered usage, time of day, and support multiple plans per region or per customer? Further, can the billing system handle discounts based on usage parameters to support promotions or conservation incentives?
Related to billing are considerations for new forms of payment, like debit-based billing which can help reduce bad debt and float and give more flexible options to customers. Going further down the path, a utility might consider whether it ultimately wants to integrate billing and remote management to automate disconnects for non-payment, for example.
Making AMI Introduction Positive for Customers
AMI brings many exciting promises with it, but they will only translate into a positive customer experience with the right operations and process approach. The volume of data that AMI generates, for example, can be seen as a challenge. But in reality, it creates opportunities to provide more options, more control and more information to customers that ever before. With foresight, utility providers have an opportunity to determine tools they need to take advantage of the strengths AMI can provide them and make the technology extremely positive for customers. Failing to do so, AMI could become very difficult to manage and lead to negative customer experiences and ultimately real challenges with their respective PUC’s.
About the Author
Trey Beasley. Trey is the Vendor Alliance Manager at Alliance Data and has worked in the energy industry for 16 years.Trey began his professional career as an engineer and Group Manager of Product Development at TXU in Dallas.
He joined Alliance Data to help create a Solution Management organization focused on the development of services supporting Utility clients. Trey is now responsible for negotiating all key vendor contracts and the development of strategic partnerships at Alliance Data.
Trey holds a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M, a Masters degree in Finance and an MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Currently, most back offices are not prepared to handle the increased data volume AMI will drive. They may also lack the billing, customer care and remote management systems they need. If utility providers fail to assess the scope of AMI’s impact on operations and the customer experience with AMI introduction is poor, they may risk run-ins with state PUCs at the end of the day. AMI, however, can and should provide an extremely positive experience for customers and help providers to engage with them more actively. The Impacts of AMI’s Introduction Simply stated, it won’t be possible to leverage AMI’s positive qualities if the right support isn’t in place in the back office. One of the first challenges AMI brings is a massive increase in network connections to every location. These connections are required to collect the data that smart meters generate and to communicate with meters for remote management.
AMI can enable real-time connectivity to smart meters at all times. That kind of connectivity, which will make more sense as energy management advances, would require as many simultaneous connections as meters at all times. By today’s standards, that’s a massive network requirement. Moving to an hourly read would reduce that network requirement, perhaps by a factor of 30. Making the appropriate network decision will depend on how a utility wants to take advantage of smart meters and AMI’s reporting capabilities. Factors such as back up networking; back up power; processes for network outages or instances where a device cannot be reached; and validation that all devices are reporting and reporting accurately must be considered as well. Though somewhat complex, the benefit of all of this networking will be improved monitoring, management and control for every customer location.
Data Volume Explodes
AMI meters will collect and store data based on any interval a provider wants. The more granular the intervals, the more data records every device will produce, which has a multiplicative and potentially exponential effect on data volume. For example, hourly readings would mean 720 instances per month where the meter creates a record. 15 minute intervals would result in 2,880 instances per month, and so on. Ultimately it will be possible to collect information related not only to overall consumption, but also environmental factors, appliance usage, and diagnostic information. This expanded data set could add yet another multiplying variable to the data equation.
Remote Management is Introduced
Automated activation and disconnect is another capability set AMI will introduce. It has the potential to eliminate a great percentage of truck rolls, thus lowering cost and speeding service activation for customers. It also allows for rapid response to fraudulent use and bad debt, enabling service to be cut off in real-time from a remote system. The utility has to determine whether its existing systems can support functions like automated activation and whether these functions can be integrated directly to a call center desktop application. It is also important to understand the amount of new functionality and integration that will be required to put all of the right tools or controls in the right places.
Because AMI puts a smart meter at every customer location, it should enable visibility of outage status to the back office for each location. During outages, this kind of visibility can improve call routing based on the likely call type, and pinpoint likely points of failure on the system to expedite the dispatch of repair crews by identifying which meters are recording usage or receiving power and which are not. Utilities should not have to rely any longer on customer calls to identify and diagnose an outage, but rather should be able to reach out to customer proactively to provide repair or emergency information.
For load balancing purposes, a Management Maintenance System could provide detailed pictures, for example, of which locations or regions are consuming the most power and at what times of day. This can improve prioritization of investment in infrastructure to drive reliability. Eventually it should also enable detailed consumption reporting within each location to support more advanced energy management.
To realize these types of possibilities, AMI is an enabler, but the back office needs to have the right tools in place to translate AMI data into useful information and to access device capabilities for remote monitoring and control. The range of new possibilities AMI introduces – including everything from new equipment to new billing plans – is a lot for a provider and for customers to take on all at once. Any strategy should include an analysis of what AMI can bring to the table; what progression makes sense for introduction; what process and systems changes are needed for support; and how customers will be oriented with them for a positive experience.
Customer Care Gains Responsibilities
As an increasing percentage of AMI’s capabilities are leveraged, there will be a growing impact on customer care operations. A significant increase in call volume can be expected simply due to smart meter installations. As these translate into more sophisticated billing plans and consumption management programs, customers will have more questions and will typically pick up the phone to have them answered. AMI is likely to continue to increase average call volumes to contact centers as it continually enables new capabilities. Because these calls will be somewhat non-standard in nature, their average handle times could be significantly longer at the outset as well. This volume must be handled, but alternate channels such as the Internet should be used to educate customers proactively and answer as many questions as possible before having them pick up the telephone. Given this alternate channel, many customers will choose not to call the contact center first.
The new range of rate plans AMI data can enable is exciting for the business, but it will add tremendous complexity to legacy CIS systems. There is some risk of creating billing problems or inaccuracies. Confusion with new plans or bills can also lead to customer complaints and spark issues with state PUCs. Though extreme outcomes, what they suggest is that customer care and customer education are real priorities in AMI introduction. Customers are going to be asked to adapt to new ways of thinking about their energy usage and their interactions with their provider, and no change – no matter how beneficial for all involved - is ever simple or comfortable without repeated and proactive information and encouragement.
To educate customers, contact centers will need education on things like new rate plans and energy management initiatives. Agents will need to learn how to coach customers on taking advantage of special rates based on conservation incentives. New responsibilities may also move to the contact center, such as remote activation and disconnection, proactive outreach to customers during outages, and other possibilities. The question is not whether the contact center can handle it, but rather how the contact center will handle it.
Examining Operations to Prepare for AMI
To move from today’s operations practices to those that work best with AMI, a utility needs to ask the right kinds of questions, based on its AMI strategy, to determine its requirements. The critical areas that are likely to impact customers’ experiences with AMI introduction include customer care; remote management; billing and rating as well as the relationship among all three.
Customer Care
As mentioned earlier, the first two questions are how much of an increase in call volume and handle times to expect and whether the contact center can manage that level of volume. It is also necessary to examine whether the current agents in the call center are sophisticated enough to handle their new roles. If they are up to the task, how much new training they will require? AMI’s capabilities can help to support contact centers agents. So, questions such as whether tools like IVRs are in place that can help automate outbound calling for outage or emergency reporting are critical.
It is also necessary to assess whether CIS systems can handle the new volume and types of data about the customer and make them accessible in ways that matter to the contact center agent. Can the CIS manage new rate plans and product offerings? How about new types of information about the customer that might be collected, like details on their daily consumption and household appliances? Additionally, what is the strategy that will drive customer queries to the web and what functionality customers will want to see there is critical to determine and a significant undertaking in and of itself.
Remote Management
As discussed, remote management capabilities are effective when they are made accessible to the right people within the right systems and processes. A utility must ask whether its CIS system, or another customer management application, can integrate remote management capabilities, like automated activation and disconnect. Similarly, is there a work management system that can take in AMI data and produce a live map of active and inactive locations and optimize outage troubleshooting and repair response? This information needs to be provided real time to the back and front office for better customer communication.Further, it may become necessary to install systems or processes that can validate that meters are reporting accurately while assuring that collected AMI data, billing and consumption management are all consistent in their view of each customer. As usage collection becomes dependent on the network, it may become increasingly important to validate billing accuracy. Billing inaccuracy can lead rapidly to a negative customer experience and complaints to the PUC.
Billing and Rating
Billing and rating will be impacted significantly because of both the volume and types of usage data that will become available. More billing variables, or more variables that drive discounts, translate into far more complex billing requirements. The first question is whether the billing system can even handle the new volume of data. If so, can it also handle rating for things like tiered usage, time of day, and support multiple plans per region or per customer? Further, can the billing system handle discounts based on usage parameters to support promotions or conservation incentives?
Related to billing are considerations for new forms of payment, like debit-based billing which can help reduce bad debt and float and give more flexible options to customers. Going further down the path, a utility might consider whether it ultimately wants to integrate billing and remote management to automate disconnects for non-payment, for example.
Making AMI Introduction Positive for Customers
AMI brings many exciting promises with it, but they will only translate into a positive customer experience with the right operations and process approach. The volume of data that AMI generates, for example, can be seen as a challenge. But in reality, it creates opportunities to provide more options, more control and more information to customers that ever before. With foresight, utility providers have an opportunity to determine tools they need to take advantage of the strengths AMI can provide them and make the technology extremely positive for customers. Failing to do so, AMI could become very difficult to manage and lead to negative customer experiences and ultimately real challenges with their respective PUC’s.
About the Author
Trey Beasley. Trey is the Vendor Alliance Manager at Alliance Data and has worked in the energy industry for 16 years.Trey began his professional career as an engineer and Group Manager of Product Development at TXU in Dallas.
He joined Alliance Data to help create a Solution Management organization focused on the development of services supporting Utility clients. Trey is now responsible for negotiating all key vendor contracts and the development of strategic partnerships at Alliance Data.
Trey holds a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M, a Masters degree in Finance and an MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas.
