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Did you miss us at DistribuTECH? Are you curious to learn more about the newest iFactor products? Would you love to see iFactor live? Watch Brad Sileo’s interview here!
iFactor Consulting recently partnered with Twenty First Century Communications, provider of utility communication solutions, to offer utilities new ways of using technology to connect people to information. Both iFactor and TFCC have demonstrated a reliable understanding of the importance of utility communications, demonstrated by TFCC’s High Volume Call Answering system and iFactor’s Storm Center and Notifi Products. With this new partnership, utilities can use High Volume Call Answering to manage the rush of calls during power outages, while utility customers can use Storm Center to view outages online and Notifi to interact with their utility through email and text messaging.
As other iFactor blog articles have noted, communicating effectively with customers has a profoundly positive impact on customer satisfaction. Jim Kennedy, TFCC chief executive officer, mentions that “Using TFCC technology to communicate with utility customers opens up the mobile communication channel and is a key step in reducing costs. But the biggest benefit for utilities is improved customer service.”
And according to iFactor’s Brad Sileo, vice president of business development, letting utility customers decide how they want to communicate greatly improves customer service and increases customer satisfaction. “iFactor’s outage communications product suite dovetails perfectly with TFCC’s utility communications solution. Combining TFCC’s 20 years of utility experience with iFactor opens up web and mobile channels to utilities.”
TFCC’s Utility Communication Solution handles a wide variety of common outage messages including real-time outage alerts, outage updates, planned events, and unplanned events. Other uses include reminders for billing & payment, service appointments, program enrollment, energy usage and load curtailment.
Entergy included several solutions powered by iFactor’s products at a recent Hurricane Expo. According to the press release:
This included an exhibit showing Entergy’s Storm Center website, including the View Outages feature. The exhibit will also feature Entergy’s Outage Texting service, which texts information to cell phones.
With storm season underway, and some forecasters predicting a busy one, its great to see utilities preparing in advance and working to keep their customer informed. At iFactor, we are certainly proud to provide solutions that help utilities communicate with their customers in all circumstances.
Kenergy’s hosted Storm Center release is generating a positive response from the media and Kenergy customers. A recent article at CourierPress.com highlights the benefits of the new release; see the full write-up here. The article explains how Storm Center is used to display the location and severity of power outages as well as estimated restoration times. The power of Storm Center in improving customer communications is emphasized, as the article points out that “the outage map should be helpful even for a home that is without power”. This is reinforced by the fact that during the 2009 storms, website hits grew from “an average of 12,000 visits to the kenergycorp.com to 47,000 visits”. The article also highlights Storm Center’s ability to satisfy Public Service Commission requirements for utilities to engage in more online interaction and communication.
