As we enter 2018, the importance of technology is accelerating and will play a significant role in shaping the utility industry in the coming years. One of these ‘technology trends’ is consumer self-service portals, which improve customer engagement, customer service, and allow utility consumers to access and manage their accounts online.
At SilverBlaze, we have worked with utility companies across the United States, Canada and the Caribbean over the last two decades; companies who we helped see a positive ROI, reduce the strain on their customer service department and improve customer experience.
One of our clients, Entegrus, is an electric, renewable and water utility based in southwestern Ontario, serving over 40,000 metered customers. Entegrus are majority (90%) owned by Chatham-Kent Municipality and minority owned (10%) by Corix Energy.
When we started working with Entegrus, they already had implemented a customer portal but it was not very user focused and was not generating the results that were expected.
Entegrus implemented the SilverBlaze Customer Portal and found that it attracted more self-service users than their previous platform. Our portal, which is designed to be customer centric and easy to navigate, helped drive more customers towards paperless billing.
Entegrus added a variety of new self-service functionality and features available in the SilverBlaze Customer Portal, leading to better customer service and better customer engagement levels. Entegrus’ customers particularly appreciate the mobile functionality of the self-service portal, which allows them to access their account, bills and data from their mobile devices at any time of day.
With the success of the implementation of the SilverBlaze Customer Portal, Entegrus paired their offering with SilverBlaze Smart Forms, and were able to offer their customers convenient Smart forms for anything from pre-authorized payments, to street light outage reporting to new connection agreements and much more.
With the new My Account portal, Entegrus customers are able to contact Entegrus at any time, a far cry from the traditional 9-5 window, and they know their concerns will be addressed swiftly.
It’s not just the customers who saw value in the new portal and updates, Entegrus staff also appreciate the features of SilverBlaze’s Customer Portal and Smart Forms. For example, the automation of workflows, the streamlining of processes, and minimizing the potential for human error, allows Entegrus to reduce the strain on staff in multiple departments, while simultaneously greatly increasing productivity company wide.
Check out what Garry Symons has to say about the SilverBlaze experience:
“We would have selected the SilverBlaze Customer Portal and Smart Forms based on look alone. They’re very intuitive. We wanted to ensure people were able to make good use of our site and customer portal – SilverBlaze helped us achieve that goal.”
Garry Symons
Director of Corporate Service at Entegrus
If your utility is interested in implementing a customer portal solution to increase customer engagement, and to improve your organization’s efficiency, contact us today, or click the below button to schedule a personalized demo of our platform.
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The SilverBlaze Customer Portal solution and Smart Forms, help public, private, and municipal utility providers, throughout the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean, improve customer satisfaction and deliver positive ROI results.
