2010 was an exciting year for the mobile device industry, and 2011 is shaping up to bring us even more interesting new ways we interact with our mobile phones. One of the most considerable and conspicuous developments has been the rapid adoption of smartphones. While only 17% of mobile subscribers were using smartphones in December of 2009, this number jumped to 27% in December of 2010. This doesn’t seem to be an unpredictable trend, either. A recent study of new phone purchases shows that the percentage of smartphone users will continue to escalate: the study showed t
hat 41% of new mobile phone purchases were smartphones. Future generations are clearly becoming more accustomed to smartphones as well. With 33% of “young mobile users” owning smartphones, mobile phone expectations will be drastically different in the next few decades.
No longer will we expect our mobile phone to just allow us to make calls – we’ll also expect it to transfer funds from our checking account to savings account before dinner, find us an Italian restaurant nearby that’s within our price range, and share pictures of our fabulous meal with the world. Even mobile users that haven’t yet jumped onto the smartphone bandwagon are beginning to interact with their feature phones (basic mobile phones) in new ways. One article tells us that in December 2010, “nearly 47% of mobile subscribers in the US were mobile media users (browsed the mobile web, accessed applications, downloaded content, or accessed the mobile Internet through SMS”. What does this mean for utilities? Almost a third of your customers are using smartphones, and about half of them are using mobile media in general. As your customers are continually exposed to more and more companies that interact with them using mobile media, their expectation to interact with their utility through mobile means will only increase.
The type of mobile users that are gravitating towards smartphones reinforces this idea. Smartphone purchasers seem much more selective when choosing a new device, as compared to the rest of the mobile market. This level of preference indicates that smartphone users are more “sophisticated consumers” that want a phone that is “part of a larger ecosystem that provides a complete mobile media experience”. Furthermore, smartphones are appealing to the masses, not just one socioeconomic, ethnic, or geographic group. 21% of feature phone users identify themselves as Hispanic, African American, or Asian/Pacific Islander; this number jumps to 35% when surveying smartphone users.
The data supporting this rapid adoption of smartphones and the array of people touched by the mobile media tidal wave is impressive, to say the least. But it doesn’t end with smartphones. Today’s three most popular electronics categories are TVs, smartphones, and notebook PCs. But thanks to the popularity of the iPad, it’s on its way to becoming the 4th largest consumer electronics category. The first release of the iPad “sold three million units in the first 80 days” of its release, and the iPad 2 “sold anywhere from 400,000 to 500,000 units of the iPad 2” during its release weekend. With estimates of around 6 million iPads sold in the first quarter of 2011 according to one article, the fast and furious adoption rates of tablets with mobile media access only further demonstrates a shift in how your customers will expect to communicate with you.
Your customers automatically assume they can interact with you on the phone, over the internet, and in person. Now they expect to interact with you using mobile media. The key to keeping your customers satisfied is to meet this expectation before it becomes a demand.
In a recent blog post, Chartwell highlighted the importance of utilities maintaining user-friendly websites with frequent design updates. A website with a modern look and straightforward navigation is an excellent way to encourage customers to use online self-service tools. As the article points out, “While there is no guarantee a website redesign will increase traffic and online service adoption, there are plenty of success stories to suggest a correlation.” Entergy, one of iFactor’s customers, made the list as one of these success stories!
iFactor’s outage communications suite is an excellent companion to website redesign, making it easier than ever for customers to communicate with their utilities through both web and mobile channels. Storm Center provides online and mobile outage status communications; Notifi is used for proactive and interactive customer communications through 2-way texting, email, and voice; and EnergySuite is available for full customer service engagement on SmartPhones. We also offer www.StreetLightOutages.com for outdoor light trouble management; this product allows utilities and other organizations to use an interactive map embedded on their website for customers to easily locate and report problems with outdoor lights, and also provides tools to manage these reports.
Interested in learning more about web and mobile customer communications? Check out Chartwell’s Web and Mobile Customer Interaction Summit and iFactor’s iConnect 2011 this April!
Join Entergy and iFactor to learn more about proactive communications at this webinar…
The nature of the utility-to-customer relationship is changing faster today than it has at any other time in recent history. A convergence of issues is driving this change, including:
Today’s utilities must foster these relationships with customers to establish the utility as a trusted energy partner as well as a business that is ‘easy’ to work with.
As a part of an overall strategy to accomplish this, several utilities have undertaken programs aimed at using online and mobile technologies to proactively share information with their customers and the public.
Offering a choice of channels to communicate on, while expanding the information available to the customer, provides a powerful change in this relationship, which can drive short term cost savings and provide a platform for the future of energy retailing and marketing.
This informational webinar discusses:
Don’t miss out on this great webinar on learning how to contact your customers before they contact you.
Register here.
Interested in learning more now? Contact us at sales@ifactorconsulting.com, visit us at www.ifactorconsulting.com, or call us at (800) 631-9839.
The Agricultural Irrigation Load Control Service Rider (ILC program) is being offered by a large southern utility to meet the Arkansas Public Service Commission’s new rules for Conservation and Energy Efficiency Programs. Under the ILC program, the utility interrupts electric service to irrigation pumps for three hours a day during peak load hours. This helps reduce ‘peak load’, which is the amount of electricity required to serve all customers during the weekday periods of summer afternoons. 30% in savings in electricity bills will be available to customers who have signed up for this program.
In order to support the program, iFactor’s Notifi product was implemented for the utility. All the customer registration information for both ILC and non-ILC accounts is maintained by iFactor’s Notifi product (including details such as cell phone number for text messages) in addition to the mapping of this information to specific accounts and meters. The first time a customer’s ILC registration information is handed off to Notifi (a customer may have multiple pumps and multiple registrations), Notifi sends a text message to the customer’s handset requesting a confirmation. A customer’s ILC registrations in Notifi remain disabled until the conformation is received, ensuring full opt-in compliance.
Once the registration process is complete, the Notifi platform takes over, receiving the results from the ILC systems that are used to plan and process load control events. Notifi receives this information via web services, and the pending load curtailments are mapped to Notifi events. Each event is used to send alerts regarding pump cycle times and status updates to the right customers. Notifi records all of these customer communications for reporting and analysis, making sure a complete record of these important customer service transactions is kept.
Notifi provides an off the shelf tool to manage the subscription and processing logic for this solution, and interfaces to the backend systems with a set of web services tailored to utility data and systems. While the production system referenced here is only focused on a specific set of load control events, the Notifi system supports complex event processing for many types of transactions such as energy management, outage information, and billing and payment details. Each customer can select the events of interest to them, and can tailor the parameters on those events to ensure the data meets their needs. Notifi allows customers to manage this profile via a web site, the call center, or directly through text messages. When this flexibility is combined with support for multiple channels such as voice, text message, and email, Notifi provides a complete off the shelf solution which lets utilities communicate WHAT their customers want to know and deliver it WHERE their customers want to receive it.
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.
