Commercial customers can look at usage patterns online to compare consumption at various company locations. For the residential customer, the company was planning to roll out an electronic bill presentment and payment system. That system will be integrated with an outage messaging system and the voice system at the call center. When customers call during an outage, the system will detect their location and tell the caller how long the outage may last based on current restoration work. To instill a focus on customer service in the company culture, all Southern Co. employees go through a training program that spans eight weeks, and employees are continually reminded of customer service goals.
Every newsletter has columns written by executive leaders on the importance of customer service.
The company also provides IT service level agreements to all of its business units to foster the feeling that service to all of its customers is vital, even internal ones. In addition, the IT staff constantly benchmarks its 15 products, including voice systems, mainframe systems, IP data networks and energy management systems to others offered in the market. We've got 10 or 12 of our products that we believe are undermarket. We've got three or four that might be overmarket. The utility industry is unique and so are the challenges confronting it.