Teamwork Makes the Dream Work!

by Richard Rutigliano, PriMedia, Inc.

Integrating your operational systems is like putting together a baseball team – all the elements need to work in harmony to hit it out of the park. (Obviously, I’ve been listening to a lot of baseball radio this summer.)

When was the last time you took stock of the multitude of operations software your company uses? Most companies have systems for account management, billing, dispatch, email marketing, lead tracking, customer rewards, new account onboarding, price protection, digital payment processing, and more. In many cases, these features had been added as the software became available, or when office staff started demanding the company upgrade from manual, outdated, and often time-consuming processes. 

The good news is that these systems have streamlined operations for energy companies … to a point. The bad news? The systems do not always work well with each other, and staff can spend a lot of time getting them to all move in the same direction. Anyone who has coached a Little League team has experienced a lot of the same frustrations! 

Making a Team

At the beginning of the season, the coaches are dealing with a bunch of kids who don’t know each other, don’t know the rules of the game, and don’t know how to work together. Somehow, a few short months later, the group has turned into a team and is playing something resembling a ball game. Of course, if someone gets added in the middle of the season, there is a lot of reshuffling that has to be done. The same can be said of a business’s software lineup. 

When an energy company adds more software to its operations, there is often a certain level of “re-training” needed to make sure the data gets where it needs to go. The problem, however, is when the new program was not built to integrate with the business’s existing enterprise software. The owner or IT manager of the company – the coach – needs to determine what information must be shared with the other platforms. The web development team – or assistant coaches – then need to determine how to make that happen. And, the business must not forget to collect feedback from its front office – the people who are working with these programs every day and know what they need, and what may be superfluous.

Team Captain: Your Account Management Software

A good team captain is the heart and soul of the team. They set the standard on and off the field, and the rest of the team looks to them, as often as they do to the coaches, to keep the amalgamation of egos working as a unit.

In our analogy, an energy company’s team captain is its account management software. Like the captain, this back-end system should organize, streamline, and coordinate, hosting customer account information, billing transactions, service history, company notes, k-factors, degree days, and more. 

To ensure seamless data exchange – or team communication – some enterprise software may allow real-time account write-back, so that online transactions are quickly reflected in the system. As “the coach,” the business owner will want to recruit a web development team that has experience with the complex and delicate processes to complete the secure data transfers that this requires.

The Battery – New Customer Enrollment and Customer Portal

In this (albeit stretched-to-the-limit) analogy, we are going to upend the rules of the game, so everyone is playing offense. As the energy company’s customers and prospects advance from base to base, the players on the field are working to ensure the home run: Turning site visitors into customers and making it easier for them to interact with the business.

The right play? Streamlined new customer enrollment, customized to the business’s unique offerings, and a Customer My Account Portal to work with it. Put these together, and they’ve got themselves that home run.  

A new customer enrollment portal offers a potential client the ease and convenience that reflects the experience they will have working with the energy company. Taking the prospect through the new customer application, credit check, and enrollment in value-added programs, a new customer enrollment portal can then create the account in the business’s enterprise software (if available) and send all the information to its team.

Speaking of “ease and convenience,” a self-service portal is a requirement for any business attempting to compete in today’s marketplace. The digital age means a whole new ballgame for customer service. Consumers expect to be able to make payments, submit questions, and request service from their mobile devices and computers. Prospects who visit an energy company’s website and do not see a portal log-in option will likely assume that they do not keep up with changes in technology – whether online or in equipment and training options.

The Infield:  Billing, Payments, Enrollments, and More

When an energy company’s operations systems are properly integrated, it can be smoother than a Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance double play. Here are two line-ups to keep in mind:

Payments to Enrollments to Invoicing: These three should be the A-team of online services made available to energy customers. Why? Because they dramatically increase the business’s cash flow, improve customer satisfaction, and drastically cut down the time that staff are required to answer “simple” questions. It can’t be said often enough: If an energy business is not offering an online payment option, it will lose customers. When more than 90 percent of users expect to be able to pay their bills online, companies need to take heed! 

The same holds true for enrollments in price protection, budget, and service agreements. These contracts can be digitized, offered online, and completed with digital signatures and immediate payments via the business’s gateway. Pricing plans can be set to include expiration
dates and account-specific parameters for gallons protected, to shield the company from market volatility. Lastly, billing presentment software automates the invoicing process and helps transition customers from print to digital billing. This speeds up the time from service to invoice, and is proven to reduce the open payment period.

Monitoring to Dispatch to Dashboard: An alternate lineup, but an A-team nonetheless. Integrating tank monitoring and dispatch/scheduling systems with the account management software will streamline the entire dispatch operation. As a dispatcher team develops the next day’s schedule, they can make lighter routes more cost-effective with preemptive tank fills based on monitoring data from automatic delivery locations. This will not only reduce daily operating costs, but could also ease delivery pressures at the height of the season, especially for commercial or agricultural routes.

It all gets pulled together with an intuitive dashboard – the playbook – that provides the team with access to all the integrated applications. An energy company’s CSRs can respond to customer requests more quickly, and the management team will be able to easily review reports, new accounts, and system analytics. 

The Outfield: Tracking to Marketing to Rewards

The outbound marketing and sales systems round out the lineup in the outfield, with lead tracking systems; text, email, and on-portal marketing options; and loyalty reward programs. These programs aren’t cloud gazing or picking daisies in right field, they are hustling to capture new business and keep customers engaged and happy. No fly ball or ground ball missed. 

Lead tracking is for more than closing new accounts – it can help the energy business close those accounts more quickly, follow up on new equipment requests from current customers, and help it market new services as it diversifies. When integrated with the company’s enterprise software, the lead tracking system can quickly update accounts with the data from closed sales. The information from the back end can be filtered by sales managers to identify prospects for equipment upgrades as well, which can be passed on to the sales team. 

Filtering data in an enterprise system also enables the energy company to personalize its outbound communications, whether via text or email messaging, or with targeted marketing messages on the customer portal. The account data can indicate which customers are due for a tune-up, may be running low on fuel, or are approaching a service or budget plan renewal date. System integration enables the energy company to automate its messaging so that its communications are relevant, and therefore more likely to generate action and engagement.

If the team is actively working to move customers and prospects around the bases, a modern loyalty rewards program will keep the company at home base. Many fuel companies are still limiting their rewards program, only offering credits toward future purchases to customers with a service agreement. While this may be cost-effective to the company, it can severely limit the efficacy of the program. These programs immediately exclude anyone not on a service plan, and the benefits are often so far in the future – in the customer’s mind, at least – as to be nonexistent. Customers today expect immediate rewards. Updating loyalty rewards to a sales-based system that delivers value with every dollar the customer spends answers that expectation. Rewards can be redeemed for discounts on company products and services, as well as consumer goods via a fulfillment services partner. 

It may sound as if a program like this would require a lot of paperwork and accounting, but when the account management software is seamlessly linked to the rewards program, every customer payment can be automatically converted to loyalty points. Now the business is ready to start lighting up the scoreboard. 

And there you have it. A full roster of services that, when integrated for maximum efficiency, work together like a well-trained team. It’s time to take the field!

Richard Rutigliano is President of PriMedia, Inc., an integrated marketing and communications firm specializing in the home energy sector and offering a wide array of SaaS products nationwide. He can be reached at 516-222-2041 or rrutigliano@primediany.com.

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