Hidden time thieves in your call center

Is it the complex telephony infrastructure?
Are your IVR menus too complicated? Too many levels?
Is the skill based routing off? Hunt groups are setup wrong?

Possibly,  but these issues jump off the page and if your call center was having this type of issue, the KPI’s wouldn’t lie. The single biggest expense in any customer-focused call center is labor. Self-service may have exploded in the last decade,  but humans are still the foundation to customer satisfaction.

So where have the humans and the technology not found that perfect synergy in your call center? Based on our observations after working with dozens of call centers over the years, it is what happens after the call not during the call.  In most call center deployments, the high–stress, high-visibility issues are what occur when the customer is on the phone, and every second counts.  These are the first items to get addressed and everything else gets shuffled because it’s not happening right in front of the customer. If you want to find time (minutes – and lots of them -  in your call center, evaluate what is happening after the call.  During those expensive minutes that elapse between when the CSR ends the conversation with one customer and before they are available to provide excellent customer care to the next.  The amount of recoverable capacity will surprise you.

What will drive Demand Response adoption

I just finished reading a good article by Kate Rowland at Intelligent Utility about the future of Demand Response 2.0.  Most agree that it is one of the keys to a smarter grid, but how to engage customers and drive adoption is still a work in progress.

As I have worked with clients and had discussions with others in the industry, this seems to be a question everyone is pondering.  The answers are varied in approach and tone:

• Dynamic Pricing - Whether punitive or incentive-based, hitting the pocket book is almost always effective but can damage the relationship with consumers and make conversations with regulating bodies much more contentious.
• Conservation Programs - Educate the public on the high value of lower demand.  Less fuel, less need for additional construction, less reliance on inefficient or dirty generation assets.
• Improved System Stability - DR can be used to avoid brown-outs and reduce the chance of over-capacity problems that plague many systems.
• Cost - Working with the utility to develop profiles that lower overall usage and reduce consumption at times of peak demand can reduce the $/kwh that utilities pass on.

Most utilities will ultimately need to take a little from each category to put together a message that works for their customers.  Municipalities and Cooperatives face a slightly different challenge but also have one key advantage.  Since they are not profit motivated, they are able to show a direct correlation between reduced demand and a reduction in the cost passed along to customers.  By not purchasing peak power from the spot market during high demand periods, they are able to reduce their power cost significantly.

IOUs suffer from the opposite sentiment.  Their customers assume any change they are asking for is profit related and can't be in their best interest.  Unfortunately, this has proved true often enough that customers must be cautious.IOUs will be forced to work doubly hard to communicate the benefits and sway public sentiment.

Ultimately, global realities may make the need to convince and cajole irrelevant.  Fuel prices & availability, legislation forcing renewables or reduction in consumption (negawatts), and physical limitation on distribution systems could easily turn demand response into a mandate rather than just a good idea.  

One thing is certain:  Now is the time to get a strategy in place because the need for DR increases every day.

Texas winter storms 2011 rolling blackouts, are the energy companies to blame?

by Adam Cox


Where was Smart Grid and why didn’t it help?


Well now the rubber has really met the road. For the past 24 months consumers have been hearing about Smart Grid, Sustainable Communities, Energy Conservation, etc…and how the grid can now heal itself, blah, blah, blah and they will never be out of power again. We have those really entertaining TV commercials from some large technology and consulting firms to thank for this, plus the oversell done by the federal government and other energy advocacy groups.

Now in a week of extremely severe weather those implied promises have fallen dramatically short and the consumers are as usual upset with the utility companies. It is now time for the evil energy corporations to once again bear the brunt of the public outcry. Now in the interest of fairness the energy companies did make some mistakes in the week leading up to the storms and during the storms themselves; that will be a topic for another day. Back to the issue at hand, I can guarantee you that were you to search through all the articles and watch all the news reports no one will be talking about what consumers have done in the past 24 months to work with, or in most cases roadblock, local utilities to enable all this great new technology. Which puts in sharp focus the root cause of the entire Smart Grid controversy, now exposed for anyone paying attention;

Consumers demand perfect service, low rates, 100% control & privacy, and instant response in the event something happens.

Utilities want to deliver perfect service, keep consumers rates as low as possible yet still earn a profit, create alternative demand response approaches by more granular control of consumption on the grid, and have the highest possible response times in the event something happens.

Opposing point number 1: Perfect Service
Doesn’t exist and won’t exist in our lifetimes. In order to provide perfect service the national electric and gas distribution infrastructure would have to be built to accommodate maximum peak demand. This level of consumption is fair below average or base load and would represent an enormous amount of assets that would be idle for long periods of time. Construction costs would be enormous, rates would skyrocket, and the target is always changing. Some may vaguely at this point remember speeches by President Obama, Secretary of Energy Chu, and other industry leaders about why 10 – 30% reductions by 2020 were important. If not you can search on energy reduction policies for 2020 and find tons of information at the state and federal agency levels. Bottom line, demand will outpace capacity for the next decade. The question for consumers and utilities to ask is how to achieve these reductions, because in emergency situations more efficient homes and business make a difference between rolling blackouts and no rolling blackouts.

Opposing point number 2: Low rates
Rates are not going to go down. There it is, accept it and move on. Basic supply and demand applies here; demand is continuing to grow while supply is struggling to keep up. Smart Grid is not going to lower rates, consumers could see a reduction in their bill from using energy smarter but rates per kilowatt hour will not be lowered as a result of putting a smart meter at homes, smart plugs/IHDs in the home and enabling more granular control. If you add in the demand of perfect service referenced above lowering rates becomes impossible. What consumers should be demanding are the tools to manage their power consumption better. Shockingly the exact opposite is happening as vast amounts of consumers dig in at the thought of the utility, who supplies all of their power already, knowing how it is being used in the home at the major appliance level. Unless you are Dr. Evil channeling off power to build your next generation death ray, what is the real negative impact to you as a consumer?

Going back to our title and original two questions:

1. Last week’s rolling blackouts, are the energy companies to blame? The energy companies have to share some blame in the event, but consumers do not get to skate on this one. Many of the major utilities in Texas have been advancing Smart Grid and Sustainable Community programs for the past 18 – 24 months and consumers have not shown the slightest inclination as a majority to get on board or acknowledge the reality that electricity, natural gas, and water is a shared commodity. Consuming energy more intelligently is not infringing on your constitutional rights, in fact it is just the opposite. Being a smarter consumer of energy in all its forms is being a good citizen of this country and member of your local community.

2. Last week’s rolling blackouts, where was Smart Grid and why didn’t it help? The electrical grid, with the exception of some large and small pilots, has not changed just because a smart meter has been installed at a consumer’s home. Without the cooperation of consumers to allow, some parts of the home to managed, aka turned off for short periods of time, utilities are constrained to turning off blocks of homes being powered on a shared circuit at the substation. The same method we have always used, or at least the last 25 years. In short Smart Grid didn’t help because on a large scale it does not exist yet.

There were a lot of contributing factors beyond those I have discussed today, to last week’s rolling blackouts. All parties share blame including regulators, consumers, and energy providers. The way forward is to work together as consumers and providers, a simple concept that is now and will continue to be a struggle to make a reality.

I saw the weather forecast, did you?

By Stephen Daniels

Why didn't my utility see this coming? I saw the news.

"Winter Blast 2011"... "Lay in heavy supplies, this one is going to be a bear"..."Colder in Dallas than it is in Anchorage today".

So, I prepared. I rushed to the supermarket and prepared for the blizzard. I called the school weather hotline. No school, thank goodness, so won't have to worry about getting the kids up and out of the house. Nothing to do now but go to bed and see if we wake up to real snow in Texas.


That is what many Texas consumers did last week and they thought they had covered their bases. Unfortunately, the folks responsible for making sure the lights stay on seem to have been asleep at the wheel. Unprecedented spending on the Smart Grid is in the news everyday and the deployment of smart meters has moved at a break-neck pace. Trucks have rolled up to houses across the state and extended their ability to see how much energy is being used and exactly when it is being used. Forecasting demand for electricity should be a fairly exact science.

But it wasn't. Rolling blackouts started early in the day and affected significant portions of the state. Residences, businesses, schools, even hospitals were in the mix. As we saw on the news, the group responsible for electric reliability (ERCOT) put out the call for additional capacity but utilities were unable to answer the bell. The blackouts continued throughout the day. I have heard my whole life that Texas has little to worry about when it comes to power because we have our own grid. Sounds great until your "own grid" doesn't have enough power for the people who live on it.

When the utilities were confronted by consumers about the value of smart meters, the standard marketing campaign double speak told us that they were the key to the Smart Grid and were going to give us unparalleled reliability. Instead, we saw a first in my lifetime, outages across the state. Then, to add insult to injury, we were told to expect more blackouts and that everyone should curb their usage at home during this record cold. How about, "We are working hard to rise to the challenge and get the necessary resources online."?

The federal government decided that fast-forwarding our utility infrastructure into the future was worthy of hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies and you all lined up to get your share but we are left wondering if "spend it fast" was the total depth of the plan to use that money. Electrons are a commodity but when you start asking me to participate by checking my daily or hourly consumption, curb my demand at peak times, and work with you to ensure the health of the systems you have to start thinking differently. It is time for you to start thinking about your service in terms of product.


We are past the era of being amazed that the lights come on when we flip the switch. Complicated problems require thoughtful answers. Quality service, clear customer engagement, and a well-communicated plan must be part of the strategy.

Smart Meter deployment creates consumer concerns

Smart Grid and smart meters hold the promise of long term consumption management and reduction but how reliable is the new technology? Recently consumers in California have contended that the new meters do not capture consumption at the same rate as traditional meters and have resulted in increased power costs. Are the new meters more accurate than the old meters or are there calibration issues in the new meter technology? The link below is to a recent New York Times article describing what some states and commissions are dealing with.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/us/14meters.html?_r=1&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell&partner=rss&emc=rss

If additional oversight will be needed to ensure meter benchmarking and calibration testing above what utilities have done historically is required, what is the incremental cost of deployment and long term support going to be?

Why put an IHD in the home?

This question has been floating around for a while now and with the grant release recently it seems like a good time to address this issue.


Couple of interesting facts about smart phones and the market forecast for adoption:

1. GSM and Smart Phones combined made up 63% of the world market in 2006

2. The iPhone & Blackjack for consumers, and Blackberry for businesses have completely changed the way phones are viewed and utilized

3. Each new generation of phones enhances capability and security

The role of the In-Home Display is to provide the consumer with relevant actionable data about their energy consumption and account. Yet, how many of us keep our phone/PDA within easy reach, even at home? While the IHD would give a counter top presence in the home, is it likely to become just another item on the counter taking up space that is eventually disregarded completely?

The long term view has to be yes without a doubt. The global cell phone market devotes billions to marketing and sales, constantly touting the smart phone as a lifestyle device. Utilities may have a unique relationship with consumers, but why try to compete for consumer attention?

If you want to get the most out of those federal funds not allocated to smart meters, refocus grant dollars going towards IHD’s into, Smart Thermostats, Consumer Portals, and Web Applications targeted to smart consumer devices.

Smart Grid...where do you start?

In discussions with various utilities and listening to other vendors providing both products and services over the past couple of years I hear a common question, "how do we get started?"

Smart Grid creates a unique challenge, mainly based on the fact that the scope of a given smart grid project can have widely varying scope. It can be targeted to the home, specifically inside the home beyond the meter, or focused on the telecommunications and managing assets more effectively through distribution automation. Given all the variables and conditions that can exist it can be daunting for managers and executives to get a comfort level with all the costs associated and value they can expect in return.

The good news is, smart grid solutions can be adapted to suit most situations. Leaving managers and executives to ask some fundamental questions: What do my customers really want? What does my utility really need?

Those two answers will help determine a direction for not only smart grid but for the overall business and technology strategy of the organization.