How to Offer MultiChannel Self Service – ASUG Webcast Summary Part 1

This was an ASUG webcast given by the ASUG Utilities SIG last year.  Below are my notes.

The SAP speaker said “we are living in a digital age”.

Long gone are the days when people walk into a bank to pay a bill or call into a call center to start /stop a service.

Just having a simple website for a utility is not enough, said SAP

Customers today have expectations; they want it now “on their fingertips”

More about millenials – Facebook, Twitter – users are connected everywhere and at all times

They are socially networked; they are channel agnostic and expect great user experience across all channels.

They expect apps

Figure 1: Source: SAP

“Old channels never die” they just become complementary to new channels

There is a “Galaxy of applications”

Utility needs to support its applications and third parties

How does a utility do all that without breaking the bank?

Figure 2: Source: SAP

If there is a requirement to have a self-service portal, becomes a big implementation project

Then the requirement for to support a third party application for energy comparisons

Utilities have “point-to-point” clutter – it is expensive and does not scale

Figure 3: Source: SAP

With multichannel foundation for utilities it is channel agnostic; if outages due to storm and traffic to your website – it is scalable.

It offers out of box features for self-service billing, payment outages

It uses open standards REST and OData

It is robust and comes with ready-to-use applications

Figure 4: Source: SAP

SAP provides apps on various channels like web and mobile

SAP is working with partners to develop consumer applications that take advantage of MCF

SAP will continue to enhance multi-channel applications – continue to provide simplified and unified access to the apps

Figure 5: Source: SAP

Demo: MCF in action

Customer has moved to a new house

He is shopping but has not signed up for utility

He sees kiosk in store; equipped with product finder tool – search for products and sign up

Figure 6: Source: SAP

He can search for products and sign up for the service

He sees consumption cost changing in real time

Figure 7: Source: SAP

He walked out of store with gas and utility contract

He logs to customer self-service on his iPad, clicks on alerts

Figure 8: Source: SAP

Figure 8 shows an overdue invoice

Figure 9: Source: SAP

Then the logs on to desktop utility site to make payment

Figure 10: Source: SAP

Customer sees consumption history

More to come.