High bill resolution is a pressing concern for both utilities and customers, often causing dissatisfaction and reduced call center performance.
To make a bad situation better, customers need clear answers to questions like, “Why is my bill so high?” and “What can I do about it?” Responses such as “it’s the weather” don’t go far to resolve customer frustration.
But Avista has succeeded in turning negatives into positives by equipping call center agents with Bidgely’s AI-enabled energy analytics about each customer’s personal energy use.
We sat down with Avista Customer Relationship Representative Connor Hennessey at Bidgely’s EmPOWER AI conference, and he shared how the Avista customer service team is leveraging Bidgely’s High Bill Analyzer to improve the customer experience for these challenging calls.
Connor shared how Bidgely’s energy insights and personalized customer recommendations are amplifying their customer support efforts across the board, including a remarkable 27% reduction in truck rolls as well as reduced call handling time.
Then vs. Now
“In the old ways, when a customer came to us with a high bill, all that we had to go on – both the customer and the CSR – was the bill itself,” recalled Hennessey. “We’d be able to see the amount of kilowatt hours or therms, depending on if it was gas or electricity, but would have to dig in further on the calls to try to figure out where that energy usage might be coming from.
“We didn’t go into the conversation with any insights about whether the energy usage was linked to cooling or heating or entertainment or some other specific appliance. So what most often ended up happening is that we would send our field representatives out to those homes to do a meter test.
“And even with that test, the cause of a high bill might not become apparent. The customer would be left in a state of vagueness, and any sort of impactful follow up conversation on the part of the CSRs would be severely limited.”
But in 2020, things began to change as Avista partnered with Bidgley to leverage UtilityAITM in order to extract appliance-level energy intelligence from its AMI data and then use those insights to enhance customer service and experience.
Avista leadership made the strategic decision to start with internal use cases first before rolling out energy insights to customers, beginning with the call centers and high bill call support.
Avista equipped its CSRs with Bidgely’s CSR Console, giving them visibility into disaggregated energy use for each customer across multiple appliance categories at five-minute data intervals. This detailed behind-the-meter visibility, combined with personalized AI-recommendations in the portal, equipped the CSRs to troubleshoot high bill calls and advise customers on savings improvements.
“Now, Bidgely gives us a lot of data that we’re able to use on a daily basis to have more impactful conversations with customers that are outside what we were previously able to have,” he said.
“We’ve seen a 27 percent decrease in the amount of high bill truck rolls. And, when a truck roll is necessary, we’re able to empower our field service teams before they go out so they have an ability to identify what type of usage is going on in that house and can have a meaningful conversation with the customer when they’re on site.”
Making the Most of Your Eight Minutes
Hennessey said he heard a statistic that customers spend an average of only eight minutes interacting with their utility every year.
“We have to make the most of those eight minutes and really capitalize on the time we spend with our customers,” he emphasized. “Bidgely allows us to more efficiently and effectively identify ways that we can create higher efficiency for what they want to use in their homes, and provide that guidance in a way that meets them where they are – whether that’s talking with a CSR or looking at the website or self-serving in other ways.”
CSR adoption and feedback was strong, as evidenced in one very cold winter, as Avista’s CSR Portal was used over 3,000 times in December alone to address high-bill and other customer inquiries.
“High bill calls involve a lot of questions. Oftentimes when a customer gets a bill, they see the kilowatt hours, but they don’t know what a kilowatt hour is. It’s not really layman’s terms. But our ability to talk to them in terms they understand about what is actually going on in their home with their appliances and energy habits establishes a common language and allows us to take advantage of the full eight minutes we might have with a customer,” Hennessey explained.
“By utilizing the Bidgely tools, we’re able to have the types of conversations customers want to have to increase their education and help them self-serve — which ultimately helps us avoid high bill calls in the future and is part of the reason our average handle times are going down.”
Hennessey added, “I’m really excited about the ability for us to utilize Bidgely in our organization. And I think the options are really limitless in regards to how we want to utilize it and how it will make the lives of CSRs easier every day.”
Learn More
To explore Bidgely’s UtilityAI™ High Bill Analyzer, visit our interactive demo portal, or reach out to our team to schedule a live demo.
