Baltimore Gas & Electric Heats Up their Customer Service Delivery
The Company
Founded in 1816, Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) is the nation's first gas utility and one of the earliest electric utilities. BGE and its 3700 employees serve more than one million business and residential electric customers and 585,000 gas customers in a 2,300-square-mile area encompassing Baltimore City and all or part of 10 Central Maryland counties.
The Challenge
As those in the utility industry are well aware, the impact of consolidation, mergers and acquisitions, and competitive pressures to improve customer service has profoundly affected the industry. In BGE's case, with a consumer rate freeze in effect and increasing expectations from regulators and customers, solutions must deliver maximum effectiveness and productivity across the organization.
Stepping up to Advantex
In an effort to ensure peak performance and greatest benefit from their workforce management solution, BGE moved from a previous version of Advantex (RM) to a newer version in 1999. Thanks to a change management team comprised of a user project manager, IT project manager and several other team members, BGE enjoyed a fairly smooth transition.
The biggest upgrade hurdle, according to BGE Senior IT Analyst Todd Martenson, was the complexity of their CIS system. A number of significant changes needed to be made in order to 'marry' BGE's system with Advantex. They also had problems getting records to and from the Order Scheduling System (OSS) and needed to open several "pipes" so that hundreds of call takers could access OSS if necessary. BGE purchased the TCP/IP CICS Programmers Toolkit from Computer Associates and retained their services for development.
Advantex and BGE's Customer1 a Positive Partnership
With the help of IBM, BGE's technical staff addressed the problems with their CIS systems by creating the Customer1 system, complete with updated fields, transaction records and server connections. Now, with Advantex and Customer1 able to easily 'talk' to each other, the benefits of their conversations have been a boon to BGE's business.
One example of Customer1 and Advantex working together to make a positive difference for both BGE and its customers is in the area of scheduling. The OSS intelligently and automatically assigns planned work to the best available worker. It schedules mobile resources so that customer requests are dealt with promptly and at guaranteed, specific appointment times.
When a customer calls BGE with a problem (e.g., service, repair, installation or maintenance), the call taker enters the data into the customer information system and forwards it to OSS for an appointment determination. If the first requested time is not available, the system sends back 14 suggested alternatives. The customer is then presented with a two-hour appointment window and assurance that the best qualified technician will arrive for the job with the right tools and equipment to get the job done right the first time.
Because OSS allows BGE to book appointments in real-time based on worker availability, skills and equipment, customers are spared the inconvenience of large time windows and unreliable technician assignment. Since implementing Advantex, BGE customer and employee satisfaction has risen significantly.
Happy Customers
From the customer standpoint, Advantex means smaller appointment windows on the date of their choosing, availability of real-time information regarding service appointment status, and a promise that work will be completed on the first call. The ability to book appointments in real-time is even more critical when the work to be completed is time-sensitive or the result of an emergency. Advantex helps BGE to provide the highest quality customer service and an important commitment to community safety.
Employee Satisfaction
From an employee view, BGE's 25 dispatch center personnel find their workload much more streamlined and efficient. Manual, labor-intensive processes are a thing of the past. Martenson recalls the days when dispatch center employees would put the customer on hold, sort through paper tickets to find an available technician, call or fax the technician to confirm availability, and then finally return to the customer.
"It's amazing to look back and think we actually operated that way. Certainly no one would dream of going back to that now," says Martenson.
The transition from faxed and hand-sorted tickets to automated orders was done by converting all records in the CIS system and entering them into Advantex as open orders. All new records were entered into CIS and handed off electronically to Advantex. With this process concluded, the number of jobs completed in a day nearly doubled in several areas.
BGE's 250 field technicians also have wireless access to important customer and enterprise information, and can receive data from the head office virtually instantaneously. Martenson also points out that Advantex provides an easy way to recognize stellar efforts by field technicians. "Before Advantex, it was oftentimes a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. Now, management knows exactly who is out there getting the job done, and staff are recognized for their work, regardless of whether they talk about it or not."
Great Service for Central Maryland
The partnership of MDSI and Baltimore Gas & Electric has overseen a successful transition to a newer version of Advantex, a marked increase in customer satisfaction, a notable jump in the amount of jobs completed each day (double in some cases), improved employee productivity, and BGE's ability to respond quickly and intelligently in the volatile legislative and competitive environment of the U.S. utility industry. All this means better business for BGE and superior service to Central Maryland gas and electricity consumers.