Engage Customers with Positive DG Experiences

Distributed Generation:
An Opportunity for Positive Customer Engagement
Presented by Jim McClanahan
Visit us at DistribuTech Booth #620
For more news and thought leadership,
Follow us on Twitter @WMPUtilities

© 2014 West Monroe Partners | Reproduction and distribution without West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
Jim McClanahan is a senior principal in West Monroe Partners’ Energy & Utilities practice
and has over 25 years of experience planning and delivering innovative utility solutions.
Jim possesses extensive experience in the electric utility industry and has held various leadership
roles related to distribution automation, telecommunications, SCADA/EMS, metering, and capacity
planning. He is able to offer a unique combination of
technical and business knowledge and experience to
our clients.
Jim joined West Monroe Partners from S&C Electric where
he was director of smart grid projects. Over the years he
has held roles as a SCADA engineer and project manager,
strategic planner focusing on development of a major
utility’s integrated resource plan, meter superintendent,
and director of engineering & operations for a utility
telecom start-up.
Jim is an active member of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and its Power& Energy Society
(PES). He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical
Engineering from the University of Tulsa and a Master of
Business Administration from Oklahoma State University.
Jim McClanahan
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 Discuss the explosive growth of distributed generation—today and in
the future.
 Explore why focusing on the customer experience is so important for
utilities.
 Offer strategies for enhancing the customer experience.
 Provide ideas on how to quantify and measure the success of these
strategies.
 Suggestions on how the utility can remain engaged and relevant to the
customers well beyond the initial application and commissioning
efforts.
What will we cover today?
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Introduction
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Recent headlines regarding the residential solar rollout
5

The projected penetration of rooftop solar means that utilities must consider the
scalability of their processes to ensure a positive customer experience…
6
Potentially growing from an average of one deployment every 3 minutes to more
than one a minute!

 The utility industry is currently seeing explosive growth of DG in the
form of rooftop solar:
 Price of solar systems  almost 15%, number of installations  around 20%.
 Some utilities processing over one thousand applications each month.
 There is a new solar installation being completed roughly every 3 minutes!
 This is driving a very fundamental change in the utility industry:
 Historically generation was centralized
 Even “deregulation” did not fundamentally change the infrastructure.
 With the emergence of DG, small-scale,
geographically-dispersed generation is the
emerging reality.
The amount of Distributed Generation (DG), especially in the form of Rooftop
Solar, is growing exponentially.
7

 Fifty years ago, utilities had “rate payers” instead of “customers”.
 The long-running joke was that the customer thought of the utility once
a month when they paid the bill and every time the lights went out.
 But focus groups tended to group utility crews with public safety
personnel.
 As deregulation approached, utilities sought ways to be something
other than a commodity and customer service has typically been a
strength.
How customers viewed the utility (and visa-versa) in “the good old days”…
8

Customers want utilities to:
 Be easy to work with.
 Provide genuine value.
 Educate and Inform the customer.
 Traditional Example: Energy efficiency awareness programs.
 Where possible, provide choices and options.
 Let the customer tailor their decisions to what best suites them.
 Traditional Example: The “average monthly payment” plan.
 Keep them informed.
 Even bad news is better than no news at all.
 Traditional Example: Information about outage cause and likely duration.
 Treat them as individuals and provide the personal touch to service.
 Listen to them. They want their opinions and ideas heard and valued.
We want happy customers, but what exactly makes customers happy?
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Disruptive Technologies
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Disruptive technology always brings both challenges and opportunities. Utilities
need to do their best to ensure DG is leveraged as a positive opportunity.
11
Major shifts offer both
challenges and opportunities
Customer expectations have
changed dramatically
DG applications can be about
more than reliability

Call Center
Internet
Social Networks
Interactive
TV
Customer
Interactions
InteractiveTV
FieldService
Differentiated Service
How do I balance cost
effectiveness with customer
preference and experience?
Channel Optimization
How do I provide channel choice
but also influence channel
selection to minimize cost to
serve?
Seamless Experience
How do we design and realize a
seamless and integrated cross-
channel customer experience?
Consumers are
changing how
they interact with
companies they
do business with
due to the
explosion of
smart devices and
communication
channels available
to them
As a result,
companies are
questioning where
and how customers
prefer to transact,
relate and
experience their
communications with
them
As customer-enabled technologies, social media and cloud solutions change the
game, customers needs continue to evolve and utilities need to adapt
12

Utilities have multiple areas to leverage these fundamental shifts in customer
engagement
13
$
How do you engage
customers to improve
customer engagement
& satisfaction
Enhance Customer Experience
Optimize Channels
Reduce Cost to Serve
Channel Strategy
Marketing Program
Design & Execution
Enable 1:1 Marketing
Brand Laddering
E-Commerce and
Digital Portals
Segment your
customers
Setup a program to
measure and act
Connect the multi-
channel experience
Build CX capabilities
and architecture
Reshape your
marketing mix
Capture data and
unlock insight
Personalize offers
and relationships
Build an efficient
technology platform
Optimize customer
service model
Use each touch-
point to drive value
Use self service
appropriately
Focus on first time
call resolution

The Enrollment Opportunity
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Need/Want
Recognition
Research
Evaluate
Purchase
& Enroll
Post
Purchase
Residential Solar Purchase Lifecycle
15

Have I gotten a
home energy audit
and considered
efficiency
improvements?
Do I have suitable
roof space or
space on my
property for a
solar PV system?
Is it a good long
term investment
that matches my
personal or
family’s financial
goals?
What financing
option is best for
me?
Who should I
select as my
installer?
Before your customers contact you for interconnection and net metering
applications, they have already made significant decisions.
16
Source: NC Clean Energy Technology Center
Installing residential solar is a significant investment decision for your customers.
They will have already invested significant time and effort before contacting their utility.

Enrollment Evaluation
Approval and
Agreement
Commission
and Inspect
Ongoing
Operation
 Enrollment is often the first interaction the customer has with the utility.
 Visibility into the process and progress is key
 Established KPIs can give a measure of the effectiveness of your process:
 Most customers enrolling are technology savvy, so having a process that meets their
expectations may include things such as:
 Web-Based Enrollment
 On-Line Payment (of application fee)
 Ability to trace progress of application on-line
 Time to complete initial screen
 Time to move through application to approval
The enrollment and approval along with related activities should be easy, timely,
and transparent.
17

The current “customer experience” for many utility customers with a typical
“paper” (or PDF) type of application process.
18
Paper processes don’t scale as application volumes increase

The enrollment process can have the “look and feel” typical of online applications
providing a feeling of familiarity (an ease of use) to the customer…
19

All information and related correspondences can be captured in a single database
that customers and the utility can access at any time.
20

From the utility perspective, application can be handled via dashboards,
improving communication and cycle times, while reducing soft costs.
21

 Be transparent
 Separate internal and external
focused items
 Remember most customers don’t
speak utility
 Contractors communicate to your
customers
 Be proactive
 Implement a scalable process
 Prepare now for inevitable DG
boom
Like “making sausage,” there are many activities taking place within the utility
during the application & approval process that customers won’t want to see in
detail.
22

Operations and Customer
Engagement
23

 Safety
 Peak Load and Load
Factor
 Generation Mix
 Optimization of Spinning
Reserve
 Power Purchasing
 Distribution Planning &
Engineering
 Distribution Capacity
Planning
 Billing
This growth is causing fundamental shifts in a number of areas across the utility.
24

While the tools associated with traditional utility assets and operations are
mature, the tools associated with DG are just emerging or, in some cases, missing.
25
Largely Mature Emerging or Gaps
Maturity for DER
processes and systems
is still developing.

Utilities are moving towards integrated IT/OT via an evolution to DERMS
26

And online tools facilitate evaluation of applications as well as provide key
metrics (KPIs) for the application process.
27

Contrast that “utility experience” with doing things manually. A better process on
the utility side will almost always lead to a better experience for the customer.
28

 Help customers quantify the benefits
 Leverage interval data to offer proactive analysis and
diagnostics
 Shows the utility is “trying to help”
 Can also lead to word of mouth awareness on both the value of DG
and the customer’s experience with the utility
 “Close the Loop” and actively seek input and feedback from
your customers.
Once the installation is complete, the utility still has the opportunity to be “more
than another monthly bill.”
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These are opportunities to stay engaged with the customer while
providing information they find valuable.

 The utility will have information related to:
 Predicted & Historic Performance of the customer’s system
 Information about performance of other (similar) customer systems
 This information can contain insight of value to the customer
 Sharing this kind of information and insight with the customer enhances
the customer experience
An example of how the production curve for a solar installation can indicate
problems, such as shadowing.
30
Why does the output not “fit”
the expected production curve?

Hierarchy of Customer Needs: It’s a little like Maslow, but different
West Monroe Partners' Customer Effort Index
measures effort required by your customers at
all touch-points and provides utilities actionable
insights into opportunities for improvement.
By evaluating the degree of member effort
required to complete key interactions in a
multi-channel environment, utilities can:
 Focus on experiences at Key Moments of
Truth & Touchpoints rather than a broad
relational focus (Net Promoter Score)
 Create loyal customers primarily by
reducing effort - not simply by delighting
them in service interactions
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Customer Effort Index Assessment quantifies program impacts
The Customer Effort Index
Assessment provides targeted
insights into how you deliver on
customer experience, as well as
insight into how you compare with
other utilities.
Specific insights include:
 Benchmarking of customer
experience against industry &
market best practices
 Channel-by-Channel analysis of
strengths, gaps, and
opportunities
High Effort
Low Effort 1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
5.0
Public Website Effort Portal Effort IVR Effort Phone Effort
High Effort
Low Effort 1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
5.0
Onboarding &
Account
Maintenance
Billing &
Payments Usage Service Orders
Information/
Help
Portal Overall
Effort
Multi-Channel Effort
Customer Portal Effort Drill Down
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 The Department of Energy has several initiatives underway to improve solar enrollment
processes as a way to identify and reduce the soft costs associated with rooftop solar PV
 West Monroe Partners is currently leading the utility engagement portion of the Midwest
Grow Solar Partnership through the DOE’s SunShot Initiative, and has recently conducted
a series of surveys to learn more about utility interconnection practices and customer
application experiences.
 Two outreach surveys are available online if you’re available to share your experiences:
 For Utilities: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/utility-engagement-survey
 For Solar Stakeholders (contractors, contractors/installers, solar developers, academics, etc.):
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/solar-stakeholder-engagement-survey
 While individual survey responses will not be shared publicly, we would like to use the
aggregated responses to create a solar enrollment processes benchmarking tool and
maturity model
DOE focus on Solar Enrollment
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 Just because a customer does not pursue installation, there can still be
value in the interaction:
 Identify “early adopters”
 Enables proactive communication going forward
 Seek to understand their decision:
• Aesthetics?
• Cost?
• Complexity?
 The industry is more dynamic than ever before:
 Five years ago there was more talk about wind than solar
 Lessons learned as solar DG ramps up may help in other areas
• Electric Vehicles
• Storage & Batteries
• Cheaper Solar
Utility initiatives related to DG can also yield other benefits and potentially be
further leveraged moving forward.
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 “Cheaper. Better. Easier.”
 Providing real-time set-points to
inverters
 Distributed generation feeding the
grid
 Integration of storage
 Distributed storage could be “charged”
using off-peak, base-load generation
 And more that we are not even
thinking of at this point…
What types of things may the future hold?
35

 Solar growth forces the utility and the customer to interact
 Make that experience positive!
 Technology has changed customer expectations
 Embrace this!
 Customers judge you based on their experience, not the
“average” experience
 The ability to scale is critical:
 Scaling may be “success based”.
 Growth may happen quickly and with little advance warning.
 Metrics measure how you are doing and identify opportunities
for improvement
 The future is tough to predict…
To recap some of the key points…
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Thank you for your attendance!
37
Visit us at DistribuTech
Booth #620
For more news and thought leadership,
Please follow us on Twitter
@WMPUtilities
Contact information:
Jim McClanahan
jmcclanahan@westmonroepartners.com
770.608.4042
Questions?

Engage Customers with Positive DG Experiences

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