T4G helps NB Power give customers what they want. Power.

Powered by me - www.nbpower.com

NB Power's customer self service vision comes to life at www.nbpower.com. The website is now a destination for all of their customers' servicing and informational needs.

Background Information

For the past year, T4G has been a systems integration and development partner in NB Power's Web Customer Self-Serve solution. The original project focused on understanding NB Power's vision for web self-service, and then articulating that vision into a customer-friendly web strategy and application solution to address business needs. After completion of the application architecture (Phase 1), NB Power awarded T4G the development contract to design and build the complete application including: user interface design, system integration with NB Power's information systems (SAP's Customer Care System and CGI's Outage Management Systems), development, testing, implementation and on-going application enhancements and sustainment.

A review of the existing website showed that it was originally built as a corporate site. But today, more and more NB Power customers requested self-service options such as web-based tools to order and manage their power service. Special emphasis was placed on empowering customer self-service with real-time self-management of services, account and billing information, outage information and co-browsing capability for contact centre staff. T4G created an integrated team of resources and collaborated with NB Power to develop the web self service application. The overriding objective of the web self-care project was to turn NB Power's website into a destination for customers for all of their servicing and informational needs. The site needed to:

NB Power Challenges

When reaching out to its customers, NB Power realized that it had to improve customer service options to increase customer satisfaction and decrease the costs of customer service delivery. Business leaders at NB Power were faced with the same dilemma hitting many other utility providers reduce costs and improve customer service; a very difficult challenge, to say the least. NB Power was also very interested in utilizing the web as a more effective communications channel while having an overall web strategy that would align with its customer services strategies and principles. Thus, a new NB Power online strategy was developed that allowed customers and stakeholders to come to one website for all interactions with NB Power.

Solution

A Web Customer Self-Serve application was developed for NB Power that provides the one-stop shopping destination NB Power desired for its customers and stakeholders. T4G worked closely with NB Power stakeholders to complete the business, functional, user, and technical requirements for the web self-service application. To ensure a successful rollout and ready adoption by users, T4G placed a high emphasis on identifying who the users of this application would be (personas) and the key messages NB Power was looking to deliver to its customers. Customer usability testing was employed to validate the ease of use and attractiveness of the site. The goal was to provide NB Power customers with accessibility to the most common self service transactions in the first release, with the plan to add new features over time. Now, via the web, NB Power customers can create and manage their online profile, view a summary of their NB Power accounts, including current and past bills for any and all of their NB Power accounts. In addition, customers can see consumption history, submit a payment, modify their payment options and submit requests for services such as a move or request for repair. Customers can search for power outages province wide by their account number or telephone number (and outage information includes estimated time of restoration) and use a home energy analyzer tool to help them save money on their power bill.

A Microsoft .NET solution was defined providing a layered architecture that could support their immediate web presence needs and provide a stable and extensible platform for expansion of features and services in future releases. A layered architecture allows development of a modifiable system that will isolate the impact of change. It provides defined areas of responsibility for each of the layers within the solution and imposes communication via well-defined and maintained interfaces between the layers. Well maintained interfaces facilitate automated testing that ensures ongoing quality and backward compatibility as the system evolves. Security of customer data was a key NB Power requirement that was factored into the overall system design. The T4G framework provides secure, stable integration with NB Power's customer care systems, outage management systems and third-party applications to provide the seamless, integrated customer experience that NB Power hoped to achieve. All intra-system communication was implemented as standards based web services using SOAP over HTTP. T4G worked closely with NB Power development resources to define the web service interfaces required to support the solution.

Benefits

T4G was able to build a web application that met the needs of the NB Power stakeholders with the end result a single destination for all NB Power customers and stakeholders for all of their information and servicing needs. T4G has built a solution on a robust and scalable platform that has the ability to evolve in future releases adding more functionality to meet needs.

This is a significant step forward for NB Power and it is one that the utility believes the customer is ready to embrace and experience. Customers will see that these improvements will truly benefit them and will have a positive impact on their relationship with New Brunswick's largest energy provider.

Lessons Learned

A customer centric self service tool was a new undertaking for NB Power, who caution other companies not to underestimate the complexity involved in a custom integration project of this nature. Although there were challenges integrating to NB Power's customer database and outage management system, the development effort will pay off for years to come. The previous customer research conducted by NB Power, and working with the T4G User Experience Group to identify personas based on targeted market research, accelerated understanding and finalization of a design that would be successful in its market.

"The Web Customer Self-Serve features are enhancing the customer experience and enabling customers to complete tasks. Our customers want fast, easy, and convenient service. We are giving them the choice and control they asked for. Web customer self-serve supports their needs and our employees' needs while gaining efficiencies and reducing costs."

Kelly Hill, Project Sponsor and Director Retail Customer Marketing

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