IVR Service Provider Apogee and Flint Energies Team to Create Mobile Billing Application
May 16, 2012
By Amanda Ciccatelli, TMCnet Web Editor
Today, more than 400 energy professionals attended the Connect 12 Conference in New Orleans to hear Apogee Interactive Business Development Executive Jon Scott and Flint Energies' Sr. V.P. Jimmy Autry share their recent success of combining Flint Energies' Interactive Voice Response (IVR) with Apogee's new Interactive Text Response (ITR).
BillingInsights, Apogee's energy analysis application, enables streamlining of the utility customer and customer service rep experiences. Providing an automated explanation, BillingInsights gives customer reasons as to why their bills may have changed from month-to-month or year-to-year, through sophisticated analysis involving their billing data.
"The beauty of IVR and ITR as a means of explaining high bills is that it weeds out those calls that can best be answered through self-service technologies as opposed to requiring customer service representative assistance, which can run up to$50 per call," explained Autry.
By presenting BillingInsights through the IVR service provider, members can hear a voice message explaining the differences in their bill amounts and offering suggestions for why it may have changed, as well as tips on how to lower them. Interactive Text Response, or ITR, is available to allow members to receive information via a text message, which includes a link to Flint's BillingInsights tool on their website.
"Customers want quick answers and have come to expect them to be available 24/7, and increasingly, they aren't talking at all-- they're texting,” said Apogee President & CEO Susan Gilbert. “This customer service benefit of ITR is huge by itself, but when you combine that with the enormous savings potential of freeing up CSR (News - Alert) time, you have a game-changer for utilities striving to make the most of every dollar.”
Apogee and Flint Energies have been working together since the early '90s with Flint being instrumental in the evolution of Apogee's RESNET online energy use applications. Currently, Flint makes Apogee's complete suite of energy education and bill analysis tools available to members.
Edited by Jamie Epstein