Hydro Ottawa receives roughly 6,000 requests for service annually.
The ability to access information and complete transactions “anywhere/anytime” is a baseline customer expectation.
To advance the customer experience, Hydro Ottawa introduced Salesforce, a cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution for Service Desk activity.
Integrating Salesforce required innovation and creativity. It involved the replacement of a “home-grown” legacy system, fully integrated with existing business applications. The transition could not impact customers or day-to-day operations and had to be future proof for anticipated enhancements.
With the introduction of Salesforce, Hydro Ottawa achieved a “first” in elevating the experience for its customers. Research indicates that most utilities still rely on telephones to initiate a service request.
The qualitative benefits of implementation include:
- Simplified online service request forms
- Integration of Google address autocomplete cross referenced with the Geographic Information System (GIS)
- Customer and contractor authentication to eliminate data entry of tombstone information
- Workflow implementation with key milestone communications such as receipt of payment
- Migration of service layout quotations into Salesforce facilitating 360-degree view of customer
- Case management and skills routing to engage the right people at the right time
- Management of requests entirely within Salesforce for improved visibility and cycle time
- Out-of-the-box (OOTB) mobile application to manage and respond to requests after hours
- Implementation of `Voice of the Customer’ (VOC) survey at the end of a job
- Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Key Performance Indicators (KPI) embedded into process for easy tracking and measurement
- Foundation for new processes such as vault maintenance and forestry services
In addition to its many qualitative benefits the new system will deliver ROI in less than two years.
Through its early adoption of a cloud-based CRM system, Hydro Ottawa is at the vanguard of this next wave of technology, ideally positioned to capture all the promise the future holds in store for its customers.
