“Why did the outage happen?” “When will the electricity supply be restored?”
Questions like these are common when customers experience an unexpected power outage. For energy and utility providers, managing these inquiries while deploying resources and coordinating restoration activities can be a complex task.
That’s where Salesforce field service utilities outage management makes a very significant impact by providing real-time visibility of the workforce and an automated way to manage the work orders to be able to quickly respond to disruptions.
Combined with customer portals, the platform enables organizations to keep customers informed during critical service downtime. Let’s explore to learn more.
The Growing Challenge of Outage Management
Utilities companies face constant pressure to restore services quickly while managing:
Extreme weather events
Workforce constraints
Rising customer expectations
Aging infrastructure
Limited field workforce availability
Coordination between technician and dispatchers
This can become an issue with regards to outage management that is further complicated with manual dispatch and fragmented systems. Organizations cannot get live visibility into restoration progress and field activities, making it difficult for them to allocate resources, coordinate field teams, and keep customers informed.
How Salesforce Field Service and Customer Portals Accelerate Outage Response
01
Intelligent Work Order Creation and Prioritization
A power outage makes every minute feel longer. Fortunately, with outage reports captured in Salesforce energy utilities cloud, companies can act instantly. These reports that come in through call centers, customer portals, and a few other channels can automatically kick off the creation of a work order, so restoration starts right away, without any unnecessary delays.
After setting up, the work orders get sorted and prioritized automatically, based on asset criticality, the number of affected customers, and where the incident is happening. That means field teams can reach quicker decisions and focus on the incident at hand without waiting around.
02
Self Service Customer Portals for Greater Transparency
Keeping customers informed is just as important as restoring services quickly, especially in today’s time when customers want immediate answers about what happened. Leveraging Salesforce customer portal utilities, companies can provide a single, easy-to-access digital space to customers where they stay updated about:
Service issues
Outage status
Estimated restoration times
Service alerts
Repair progress
Maps and notifications
This ensures that customers get enhanced transparency in real time without waiting for updates and turning to call centers to access any information.
03
Improved Collaboration Across Departments
In energy and utilities businesses, it’s not one single group doing everything. Instead, different teams work together to drive success in restoration efforts. For instance, repairs are performed by technicians; customer service representatives track problems with electricity; asset managers oversee the health of the electrical infrastructure; dispatchers coordinate the availability of resources in the field; and emergency response teams address the truly serious emergencies that arise.
However, with a manual arrangement, maintaining effective coordination between teams can be difficult. That’s where the capabilities of Salesforce field service lightning utilities effectively manage consolidated environment and enable organizations to:
Eliminate information silos
Track restoration progress
Strengthen cooperation
Gain better visibility into ongoing revitalization
Make confident decisions
04
Connecting Field Technicians with Mobile-First Operations
Field technicians require instant access to accurate information to diagnose issues efficiently on-site. However, manual processes often limit their visibility into asset histories, work orders, and job updates. Interestingly, with the Salesforce field service mobile app, they can easily access critical task details like:
Inspection checklists
Work orders
Customer details
Route guidance
Restoration instructions
Asset and equipment history
Besides, they can record inspection findings, update document completed work, and capture photos, directly on the phone, which is further shared with service managers, dispatchers, and customer support team. With seamless communication, technicians perform repairs more effectively.
05
Smarter Crew Scheduling and Dispatching
Dispatchers often delay the procedure of restoring services while deploying the right technician to the right location at the right time manually as they need to assess their:
Availability
Skill sets
Workload
Certifications
Proximity to the affected area
But Agentforce field service utilities streamline this workflow through automated scheduling and dispatching agents. It uses AI agents that identify and match the most qualified field team based on the parameters provided. It also takes into account availability, travel time to the job, etc. so the dispatching process can be streamlined. Overall, this helps the company in every way from optimizing resource allocation to better utilization of field resources.
Key Benefits of Using Salesforce for Energy and Utilities Businesses
Organizations using Salesforce can see multiple measurable and operational benefits, like:
Increased efficiency of dispatching with automated scheduling and visibility into field work for every outage
Decreased call volume to enable support personnel to perform other necessary job responsibilities
Exceptional visibility into the performance of every technician caring for a utility outage within an entirely centralized, single source platform
Customer satisfaction can improve due to automation of notifications that provide updates on how long it will take to restore service
Enhanced productivity of the workforce by providing employees access to real-time information needed to execute their jobs
Real-World Outage Management Workflow Using Salesforce
1
The process typically begins when a customer reports a service interruption through Salesforce customer portal utilities.
2
Instead of making the organization capture any manual data entry, Salesforce itself creates a case and processes a corresponding work order.
3
Once the issue is tracked and routed, the Salesforce field service utilities outage management evaluates the incident based on factors like asset criticality, outage severity, and customer impact.
4
Now, the system acknowledges the most urgent cases and allocates technicians to affected areas.
5
The dispatched field crews get relevant information about their job, like work order details, restoration instructions, and asset information on their phones to perform their tasks.
6
Once restoration activities are done, technicians document the work conducted and update the job status in real-time.
7
Salesforce will then notify the affected customers automatically about the restoration of their service.
Conclusion
So, this is how the world’s best CRM enables a streamlined outage response process while connecting technician scheduling, work order management, customer communications, field operations, and customer reporting on a single platform.
If you also want to leverage the platform, connect with Girikon, a trusted provider of utility CRM Software USA. The provider connects customer service, field operations, and workforce management on a single platform. Thus, letting you reduce restoration times, modernize outage response strategies, and improve operational efficiency.
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Salesforce Energy and Utilities Cloud gives energy and Utilities providers a digital interaction platform to personalize customer engagements. Utilities can meet new customer expectations by delivering great experiences like easily guiding customers through enrolment, transfer and activation of services through a self-service website. And using out of the box drag and drop tools, to configure complex processes. With data integration with existing back-end CIS and MDM systems, to ensure a streamlines service experience. A utility has a comprehensive profile view of each customer to deliver a highly personalized and predictive experience. Like sharing special offers for programs or new rates for products. Digital tools are available to tailor customer experiences and help customers make informed decisions. With chatbots for the first level of customer support, accessible at anytime from anywhere.
So service agents can pick up the case for the right level of assistance when needed. Agents have a thorough view of each customer account and can navigate between multiple residential or commercial accounts. With all the information they need like full chronological history, account and billing information, usage and more. And all data can be consolidated from back end systems so agents always have access to a single source of truth. Agents can also see into process and actions initiated on other channels and can use that information to better serve customers from finalizing a purchase to liaise scheduling field service appointments. Utilities now have insight through interactive dash board to real time data to keep customers at the core of their business. And can provide developers a library with hundreds of pre built business processes and integrations to accelerate time to value and digital transformation.
Chart a new course for the future of energy by streamlining your business!
Meet the needs of all energy eco-system stakeholders -customers, suppliers, partners and employees with a platform that fosters agile innovation across your entire business lifecycle.
Adapt and cater to rising customer expectations.
Adopt a digital first approach and scale fast with easy integration with your existing systems. Deliver customer first service to your customer community.
Streamline your Oil and Gas business and prepare for the future of energy.
Connect stakeholders and assets across the service journey and collaborate in real-time. Drive on field decision-making with on-th-go access to vital data and information.
ENERGY AND UTILITIES CLOUD
Drive customer service and engagement on a single, connected flexible and scalable platform.
Be the trendsetter, transition to energy & utilities cloud in Salesforce with centralized customer data, and on-time, personalized, pro-active service from anywhere, from any device.
Energy and Utilities Cloud delivers a scalable, digital and secure energy solution that adapts and scales for future energy needs.
Get access to a process repository of more than 100 preconfigured and extendable best practices
Easily connect to back office utility Billing and Customer Information Systems (CIS) with easy, drag and drop integrations
Utilise a data model with access to more than 350 extended objects specifically designed for the utility industry
With Energy and Utilities Cloud, you can take advantage of purpose-built innovations designed for an dynamic and evolving energy landscape.
Transform agents into advisors and deliver a whole new way of customer engagement.
Empower service agents with the resources they need – tools, analytics, and AI based insights, to deliver personalized customer service anytime, anywhere, from any device.
Deliver personalized customer service on a digital-first platform.
Support the entire spectrum of customers, ranging from residential customers to large commercial customers. Get a single, scalable and secure solution that delivers connected journeys and promotes self-service.
Turn customer freedom into a competitive advantage.
Offer quotes and tariffs faster than ever, by quickly processing current market pricing and customer information with a 360-view of the customer and data-driven tools.
Improve acquisition and trim churn.
Easily generate complex, multi-locational and multi-product quotes to acquire customers faster. Retain customers longer with personalized offerings.
POWER AND UTILITIES
Adapt and thrive in a dynamically evolving Power & Utilities industry.
Easily navigate the intricate utility landscape with seamless and powerful digital transformation.
Revolutionise the Utility customer experience.
Embrace digitalization and drive into future of energy transformation with a customer first approach.
Make advisors out of agents by giving them the tools that deliver a customer-360 view.
Encourage self-service and engage customers across the journey with AI, and offer multi-channel personalized service
Deliver next generation service operations and customer experience by going beyond the contact center.
Service customer needs faster in the Retail sector.
Deliver a more connected experience for customers by bringing existing systems on a single platform.
Deliver quotes and tariffs faster than competitors with data-driven tools and easily navigate multi-locational, multi-account structures.
Evolve offerings, accelerate customer acquisition, and improve customer retention by designing competitive products and services with just a few clicks.
Boost customer experience with personalised engagements and streamlined field service operations.
Become the trendsetter in sustainability.
Get ahead of your competition with innovative digital transformation that drives your business during the energy transition.
Drive energy efficiency program adoption and help customers reach their energy goals.
Educate customers and partner with them to adopt sustainable offerings and services that foster new revenue streams
Go beyond commoditization and stay current with new offerings
OIL AND GAS
Connect stakeholders and assets across every touchpoint throughout the Oil & Gas value chain. Optimize your organization for the new era of energy transformation.
Drive digital optimization across the upstream ecosystem.
Optimise communication and engagement with stakeholders across the value chain. Seamlessly connect landowners, suppliers, customers, shareholders, and the relevant compliance organizations.
Augment staff safety with tools that empower you to attract, retain, upgrade, and engage the dynamic workforce.
Reduce costs with analytics and AI to drive smarter connections across the energy lifecycle.
Boost on-site efficiency and safety.
Optimise commercial processes and deliver better service
Empower teams with digital tools that drive safety
Streamline operations and optimise asset digitization
Transform downstream enterprises.
Increase customer retention with a platform that drives personalization and growth
Optimise stakeholder relationships across all distribution channels
Lower maintenance costs, boost plant efficiency and reduce less downtimes
Remodel and enhance oilfield equipment and services.
Personalize contracts, quotes and bids and win high-margin deals
Operationalize existing investments in IoT with analytics and AI to drive business intelligence and reduce costs
Deliver value to customers with simplicity and transparency by investing in digital transformation strategies.
Develop and execute an actionable sustainability strategy.
Scale Social, Environmental, and Governance excellence to boost stakeholder engagement
Fast track progress towards achieving your sustainability goals with optimized greenhouse gas emission tracking and accounting across all your assets and locations.
Get ready for a sustainable future with a unified agile platform that allows you to pivot quickly, fast track business models, and adapts to new processes, workflows and integrations.
Common questions that we get asked often. Here are the answers.
Who can use Energy & Utilities Cloud?
Energy & Utilities Cloud is for any energy and utilities provider who wish to revolutionise the customer experience and connect the customer journey across every touchpoint.
Irrespective of what type of business model you have, whether a regulated energy company or a retail energy provider, Energy & Utilities Cloud can help you deliver connected engaging, personalized digital-first experiences across the customer lifecycle.
How do I use Energy & Utilities Cloud with my current Customer Information and billing systems?
Energy & Utilities Cloud is not a replacement for billing or CIS systems. However, you can easily integrate your existing utility enterprise systems with Energy & Utilities Cloud using out-of-the-box integration solutions driven by utility-specific data models and a repository of pre-built processes to fast track your digital transformation.
How is Energy & Utilities Cloud different from competing products?
Energy & Utilities Cloud is founded on the design methodology that built the world’s #1 CRM platform. It has been developed specifically for the energy industry. Now you get faster time to value with data models, custom industry specific apps, and out-of-the-box integrations. Build on the experience of our industry leaders for click based implementation and guidance throughout your digital transformation journey.
How so other Salesforce products work with Energy & Utilities Cloud?
Energy & Utilities Cloud plugs in easily with Marketing Cloud Experience Cloud, Service Cloud, and more. Now you can innovate faster than ever, with the full power of the Native Salesforce Customer 360 platform.
Girikon is a Gold Certified Salesforce Implementation Partner that can help you deliver an engaging digital transformation journey to your customers. Contact us today!
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