Many utility companies across the country seem to have difficulty addressing an increasing demand for interactive, multimedia customer service. The concern facing industry executives is that deregulation has created myriad choices for customers in the face of an evolving landscape that among other issues, is churning more customer questions and complaints than ever before.

Though several of the nation’s largest service providers continue to deliver the highest level of service and enjoy decade-long customer relationships, negative service stories still find their way to the public eye. For example, this intensely hot and stormy weather has uncovered inefficiency that has been previously invisible to both utility companies and the government agencies that are supposed to oversee them.

In Connecticut, where due to recent budget cuts, the state shut down a state government-sponsored utility consumer complaint call center employing 14 full-time agents who typically fielded about 45,000 calls each year from customers with questions, concerns or complaints related to utility issues – which include not just electric, gas or water companies but also telecommunications suppliers, reported the Norwich Bulletin. The elimination of the call center will leave consumers with no avenue to redress problems with their utility providers. Connecticut state residents are scratching their heads over this one.

In other cases, errors seem to result from rising demand for electricity overwhelming aging utility infrastructure. In the Baltimore area, 350,000 utility customers recently found themselves without electricity during the peak of the July heatwave. To add insult to injury, they were then told by the utility company that this predicament was partially their own fault. The Baltimore Sun reported that public outrage was high after the massive power supply catastrophe in which Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) cut the power to meet goals in the company's “Peak Rewards” conservation program.

“These customers roasted in their homes for up to nine hours in 108-degree heat so BGE could meet the overwhelming energy demand with its overwhelmed grid,” reported the Sun.

For its part, BGE swears that the customers who were cut off – about 72,000 homes – were people who voluntarily signed up for the cutoff plan, which the company designed to save energy and keep the grid from overloading. The shut-off, says BGE, is why these consumers are receiving the benefits of “PeakRewards” bill credits.

“We have represented the program fairly,” said Mark Case, the BGE's senior VP for regulation and strategy.

While it's hard to be against conservation, customers are understandably beginning to resent being the ones to carry all of the burden while reaping very few of the rewards.

Another prominent complaint utility consumers across the nation are voicing right now is that many utilities are trying to move to “smart metering” by replacing old, traditional meters with the newer, digital meters that can help match electric use to lower rates and demand. While it's a worthy goal – smart meters do cut down on energy use – many utilities are charging customers for the new meters.

One electric company, Central Maine Power, saw a group of subscribers submitting a petition to halt the company from adding on the smart metering charges, which would have amounted to an extra $12/month per customer. After strong public outcry, the Maine Public Utilities Commission ultimately voted to allow consumers to “opt out” of having a smart meter installed.

So how can utility companies avoid this customer service and public perception minefield? By ceasing to think of themselves as “legacy” utilities and starting to think of themselves as customer service organizations, for starters.

As the number of media channels by which consumers can interact with companies escalates, call centers and contact centers need to evolve to meet expanding consumer needs. The State of Connecticut might have found out, for example, how unpopular the closing of the utility complaint line would be if it had dangled the concept in front of state residents on a social networking page.

BGE might have saved itself a lot of headaches – and bad national publicity – had it made the opt-in process for its PeakRewards program more interactive, user-friendly and explanatory.

And Central Maine Power might have found customers more receptive to paying for new smart meters if it had created a better customer-based initiative for the program's launch, helping customers understand what they were paying for with the new smart meters, and what benefits they would see from the implementation.

Vendors such as Zeacom, which offers its Zeacom Communications Center (ZCC) software suite, can help utilities transform their twentieth-century customer service call centers into the twenty-first century next-gen contact centers, helping utility companies offer customers support via a variety of channels, allowing companies to keep customer service high regardless of which channel customers use to contact them or complain, either directly or indirectly.

At the same time, utilities can use today's cutting-edge call center platforms to reduce operating expenses, increase revenue, boost agent productivity and improve customer service in a short amount of time.

The smart meter conundrum will be a particular challenge for utility companies, wrote TMCnet's Linda Dobel recently.

“The introduction of new technologies such as smart meters not only brings benefits to consumers and the utilities themselves, but has also created the challenge of greater customer interactions between the two. According to ABI Research (News - Alert), global shipments of smart meters will exceed 100 million this year and forge ahead to more than 250 million by 2016,” Dobel reported.

That's a lot of customer education that will need to be done, and the burden will fall largely on the contact center. Most utility call centers are burdened with outdated technology and just aren't prepared, from an infrastructure standpoint.

Ernie Wallerstein, Zeacom's (News - Alert) President, noted that, “The proliferation of smart grid, smart metering and other potentially paradigm-shifting technologies, coupled with having to fight off challenges from a growing number of energy resellers, has permanently shifted the industry landscape as well as consumer expectations. It is critical that service providers give their customers the means to quickly and easily connect with service departments, and deliver the highest possible level of support. Zeacom solutions are a proven commodity for this market and provide contact center agents with the most advanced, easy-to-use solutions that answer this demand and prevent subscriber churn.”

Several utilities have embraced this next-generation contact center technology as a solution that not only prevented any customer migration, but also helped welcome new subscribers. 

So the question facing utility providers remains, “Can you afford not to embrace this solution?”

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.