OREANDA-NEWS. April 28, 2015. A utility’s success depends on meeting the needs of its customers. Orange County Utilities, which provides drinking water, wastewater treatment and reuse, garbage disposal, and recycling services to more than 210,000 residents and businesses in Orlando, Florida, deployed Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing solutions to enable its staff to deliver superior customer service by decreasing the average speed-to-answer time and reducing the number of monthly abandoned calls.

“We operate in an industry that is constantly transforming, making it imperative that we continuously improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency,” said Rosemary Whitacre, program development supervisor, Orange County Utilities. “Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing helps us to accomplish these goals by enabling us to swiftly evolve our business to meet market demands, reduce risk, boost customer satisfaction, and maximize revenues.”

Orange County Utilities deployed Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing as part of its 20-year plan to fully automate its IT infrastructure. The utility chose PwC—a Diamond-level member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN)—as its systems integrator. PwC, with its program designed specifically for customer care and billing implementations and upgrades, adhered to a rigorous schedule to bring the solution live in 14 months.

Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing solutions enabled the utility to deploy a comprehensive customer information system (CIS) to provide a complete view of consumer data for water, wastewater, reclaimed water, and solid-waste services, helping to streamline billing processes and provide more-responsive customer assistance.

The CIS provided call center staff with a 360-degree view of customers, eliminating the need to toggle back and forth between multiple systems and enabling faster responses to inquiries. As well, abandoned calls were reduced by nearly 75 percent, average call handling time improved by 50 percent, and the average answer speed (the amount of time the customer holds for a representative) accelerated from four minutes to one. Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing also helped decrease call resolution down to three minutes from the previous six or seven minutes. An integrated voice response system and self-service website provides clients with alternative resources for information, ultimately lowering the customer query volume by 28 percent.

“Today’s utilities are faced with a rapidly changing industry and increasing expectations from their customers. To improve customer service and remain competitive, Oracle worked with Orange County Utilities to modernize its customer information system with Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing,” said Rodger Smith, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Utilities. “With better access to customer data and resources, Orange County Utilities can speed up customer response time and is poised to exceed customer expectations now and into the future.”

Additionally, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing enabled the utility to automate billing for 150 solid-waste–hauling accounts—which previously required separate processing from the company’s other accounts—eliminating 72 hours of manually intensive billing tasks each month. Orange County Utilities could also ensure timely revenue flow by completing night-batch billing processes 43 percent faster, and reducing report production by 41 percent through the use of streamlined dashboards that show revenue trends by time period (such as year over year) and by segment (residential or commercial).