Dec 26, 2007
Oklahoma Gas & Electric “Gets Personal” with Its Customers
Oklahoma Gas & Electric (OG&E) realized the importance of personalized and timely customer communications. So when they implemented the company’s new SAP system, OG&E knew it needed an application that could integrate with SAP to facilitate the billing process.
After careful review, OG&E decided that StreamServe Utilities™ was the best equipped solution to fulfill their requirements.
StreamServe Utilities is certified by SAP and insures support for high-volume, high-speed printing environments. The product seamlessly interfaces with SAP’s Customer and Care Service module to format and personalize the content based on the specific needs of the recipient.
OG&E, part of the OGE Energy Corporation, is a regulated electric utility company that serves about 700,000 retail customers in Oklahoma and western Arkansas, as well as a number of wholesale customers throughout the region. OG&E, with eight power plants capable of producing about 5,800 megawatts, generates 70 percent of its electricity from low-sulfur Wyoming coal and 30 percent from natural gas. The company delivers electricity across an interconnected transmission and distribution system spanning 30,000 square miles.
Supplying a personal touch to customer documents
“OG&E is committed to being a leading, progressive electrical utility company,” said James W. Chappel, manager of customer projects for OG&E. “By implementing StreamServe Utilities together with SAP for Utilities Customer Care and Service (CCS) module, OG&E is able to provide integrated, flexible, and customer-centric billing and customer care.”
Prior to implementation, OG&E sought a dynamic output management solution that could create flexible billing templates, produce official correspondence, and send multi-channel documents directly to the printer. SAP’s CCS module manages all mission-critical billing and customer notification processes. StreamServe then processes, formats, personalizes, and distributes the output based on customer preferences. OG&E uses StreamServe Utilities to create a billing design that is easy to personalize and modify.
When StreamServe was put in place, the OG&E was not offering its customers Internet billing services. However, with SAP and StreamServe Utilities, electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) are now possible without requiring substantial changes. Furthermore, the StreamServe solution enables corporate accounts to pay electronically, providing a means for reducing Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), increasing cash flow. In addition the StreamServe solution includes XML capabilities, which offers valuable support to OG&E’s future online billing service options and the integration with other OG&E systems.
Giving customer service reps the right tools
OG&E’s customer service representatives are a key component of the company’s customer communications strategy. In order to serve customers and answer inquiries, representatives require access to original customer documentation. Prior to implementing StreamServe Utilities, representatives followed a time-consuming process which impacted customer satisfaction as the CSRs searched for, and then printed these documents – which caused confusion since they were formatted entirely differently than the original customer-facing documents.
Leveraging StreamServe Utilities, representatives at OG&E now have easy access to original customer documentation and can retrieve this information in a matter of seconds, enhancing customer service satisfaction, response, and talk time.
“According to a survey of customer service representatives, StreamServe Utilities is one of the CSR’s most valuable tools when addressing customer inquiries,” said Deborah Gavula, supervisor of special services for OG&E. “And that is one of the primary reasons that OG&E has been able to connect so well with its customers and, in the process, continues to be a “leading, progressive electric utility company.”