1. Actionable Customer
Intelligence for
Electric Utilities
Catalyzing emerging business models through
STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT | CONSULTING | RESEARCH

2. New challenges for Indian Distribution Utilities
Need to better ‘Understand’, ‘Engage’ and ‘Retain’ CUSTOMERS
Opening Sector, changing scenario New arising challenges
• Increasing performance based financing to • How to ‘Independently’ assess utility’s delivery
performance to end-customers (both baseline
debt struggling utilities and post improvements)?
• How to tie customer satisfaction with overall
business drivers?
• Increasing privatisation (DF vs. full • How to ensure smooth roll-outs against political
licensing) to reduce AT&C losses and and customer resistance?
increase customer value • How to prioritise capex for best customer
satisfaction in regulated tariff regime?
• Increasing investments in IT solutions and • How to handle & integrate deluge of data from AMI,
legacy records, complaint records, energy audits,
services
etc. for effective business decision making?
• How to better visualise and present information for
better diagnostics and prognostics?
• Tightening regulations to enhance • How to retain customers and engage them
competition and energy/carbon efficiency further with value addition services in new ‘free’
through energy trading, Open Access, RPO, Open Access paradigm?
captive generation, time-of-day metering etc. • How to optimise demand response to curtail
peak load and match with generation?
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3. Operational Customer issues faced by Utilities
Not meeting customer’s expectations leading to forced customer behaviors
Typical customer complaints received Forced Customer behaviors seen by utility
• Power Supply related complaints • Collection Process Deficiencies:
– Fuse off call related Complaints – Part Payment by customer
– Line Related Complaints – Non Payment by customer (Defaulters)
– Supply Related Complaints – Premise Disconnected with Dues
– Transformer Related Complaints
– Voltage Related Complaints If customer • Theft / Unauthorized Use:
issues NOT – Direct Hooking
• Meter related complaints tracked, – Tampering / By-passing of Meter
– Meter stopped associated and – Misuse of Category
– Meter Burnt resolved well, – Use of Multiple Connections - Misuse of Slab
– Meter Defective, slow or fast leads to – Sanctioned Load lower than actual usage
– No Meter
• Billing related complaints • Legal cases & customer escalation
– Cases in CGRF and courts
– Wrong bill
– Petitions with Regulatory commission
– Bill not received or not received on time
– Escalations and break-outs
– Payment not reflected
– Excess or Wrong reading
– Bad media publicity
– Meter faulty • Changing suppliers
– Bill not as per tariff / category
– High value Customers going for Open Access
• Connection and service related (Energy trading or captive generation)
complaints
– Problems in getting New connection
– Problems with customer services
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4. Gaps in Customer’s ‘Expectation’, ‘Perception’
& ‘Actual’
These gaps results into ‘forced customer behaviors’ and ‘business loss’ to Utility
Forced
customer Business
Behaviors Loss
PERCEPTION EXPECTATION ACTUAL
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5. Managing ‘Actionable’ Customer Intelligence
What cannot be Measured, cannot be Improved
Measure Customer Opinion, Preferences and Conduct deeper analytics with existing
Satisfaction consumption records
•Land/Telephone based survey with end customers (and •Integrate with geo-spatial, social, economical and
also Opinion Leaders) ethnographical data
•Customers sampled across consumption categories, •Integrate with Line monitoring data if available
geography, social and economic strata •Establish causal relationships to key customer issues
•Create GIS database of survey results
Repeat
EUCOPS* &
Business
Effectiveness
Assess Business Effectiveness Co-Design customer engagement platforms &
•Assess IT systems & data usage in decision making initiatives
•Employees satisfaction survey •As required online and offline communication channels.
•Assessment of all customer touch points and relevant •Establish some real time data collection to continuous
Business Process mapping measure customer pulse for pro-active and actionable
•Different Functional roles ‘control’ & ‘influence’ span on intelligence
customer satisfaction •Design appropriate campaigns with strong monitoring
•Develop right dashboards for different level of
management to support effective business decisions
* EUCOPS – Electric Utility Customer Opinion, Preferences and Satisfaction
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6. Customer ‘Perception’ Measurement Model
Consumption Profiling Satisfaction questions on 7 Factors Opinion Questions
 Electricity consumption  ‘Forced Choice’ 5 point Likert scale – VS, S, DS, VDS, NA  5 point Likert scale – SA, A, N,
 Profession & Education level  Order of Importance for all Attributes DA, SDA
 Economic status  7 Factors – total 28 Attributes  Validation
 Meter type, backup devices etc.
1. Unplanned Outages
2. Planned Outages
3. Voltage Stability
4. Safety & Maintenance
5. Local Electricity Infrastructure 7. Ease of New Meter
6. Breakdown Restoration Power Quality & 8. Resolution Meter Complaints
Reliability 9. Resolution Billing Complaints
10. Customer Service Response Time
11. Staff Behavior
27. Capability Company Image
Customer 12. Access to customer service
28. Community Engagement Service
CS
13. Advance notice about disruption
14. Advance notice about public work
25. Complaints Traceability 15. Awareness- Energy Efficiency
26. Online Accessibility of Information 16. Awareness- Customer Rights
Access & Record Communication 17. Communication Modes
Records Handling
18. Meter Accuracy
23. Fairness of Price 19. Bill Receipt on Time
24. Value for money Meter Billing 20. Billing Accuracy
Price
and Payment 21. Easy bill understanding
22. Modes of Payment
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7. Some Key Insights from Customer Analytics
Useful to Existing/New Operators and also Bidders
What are the key customer segmentation
trends in terms of geographical What are the key issues on Power
localization, avg. monthly consumption, reliability, Metering/Billing, Customer
What are customer preferences & opinions
economic loss due to power outages, types services, utility communications, utility IT
towards privatization, open access, EE,
of meters, backup equipments, and records handling, Tariff and utility
support to demand response mgmt, tariff
education/profession, access to internet, Management as perceived by customers
premium for green power etc.?
electricity bill payment preferences, etc? across 28+ attributes? (across for different
(across different customer categories of customer categories and also overall)
Residential, Industrial, Commercial & Agri)
Which locality/pockets has more issues
Which locality/pockets has more issues
How to prioritize capital expenditure with unplanned outages, safety &
with voltage stability, electricity infra,
across different service areas and maintenance, breakdown restoration,
power disruption (unplanned and load
consumer categories for highest return on meter complaints, new connections,
shedding), customer facilitation centres,
customer satisfaction, which is found to be access to customer services, delayed
metering/billing/payments etc. which will
correlated with ROI? payments, records handling etc which will
govern CAPEX
govern OPEX and strong internal BPR
What are trends in customer payments
and what right design elements could
mitigate utility business risks of customers
not complying with payments?
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8. Deeper Insights when Associated with Other
Secondary Customer and Utility Data
Socio-Economic-Political-Ethnographic; Customer records; AMI & Energy Audit data
Socio Economic Parameters
Existing Consumption Existing Power Procurement Existing, if any Line
impacting load growth &
Records Records Monitoring data
demand response
• How are key Economic • Why customers do not • How to optimise and match • Analytics on Line
factors like population, per pay? power procurement with monitoring data in
capita income, workforce • How has been the load demand response association with the line
participation, District growth trends across (including RPOs) specific customer records,
Domestic Product (DDP) different categories of • Is there willingness in opinion, preferences and
correlated with load customers measured in no. customers to change their satisfaction
growth? of customers, connected demand response? What
• How are key Social factors loads, electricity sales, incentives?
like Human Dev. Index revenue billed etc. across 5
(HDI), slum population, years?
SC/ST population, rural • What are the key revenue
electrification, literacy, customer segments
financial access etc. (measured by billed and
correlated with load realized avg. tariff) and
growth? their contradicting growth
• How could various Socio- patterns potentially
Economic parameter trends obstructed by poor
could be projected forward electricity service delivery?
in time to estimate future • How has tariff policy &
load growth? utility interventions
effected load growth &
consumer payments?
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9. Some of our work in this space
Custom research, Consulting and Broader Stakeholder Engagement
• Supporting roll-out of new DF • Stakeholder Engagement
Operator (SPANCO, Nagpur) – Conference on ‘Utility Monitoring &
– Long contract for managing Customer Distribution Franchise (DF) - Enhancing
Monitoring & Analytics SEB‘s Performance’ for IIES
– Conducted two EUCOPS study – Linkedin Community of Interest
focusing on scaling Power Distribution
Franchisee model in India
– Blog: Knowledge sharing on Smart
Distribution
• Supporting informed bidding by DF
Bidders & influencing RFP design by
GoMP (for 9 cities of MP)
– Conducted EUCOPS study for 9 DF
prospect cities • Market Research report on trends
– Detailed RFP analysis and customer and innovation in Distribution
segmentation
– Socio-economic analysis to estimate Franchisee business - Urban and
load growth Rural (upcoming report)
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10. Let’s get in Let’s deploy our insights and actions
for your business to improve and grow!
touch…
Join us in our conversations at,
pManifold Insights
Premium & Free Reports,
Presentations, and more… Talk to us or drop by…
Rahul Bagdia Faiz Wahid
pManifold +91 95610-94490 +91 88056-55069
Community Blog Rahul.Bagdia@pManifold.com Faiz.Wahid@pManifold.com
Articles, technical notes.
India (Main office) USA (Liaison Office)
Power Distribution True
Distributed
Generation
Crystal Plaza, Level 2 2020 Calamos Ct.,
276 Central Bazaar Road, Suite 209
Franchisee
AT&C
Efficiencies
Power
Distribution Ramdaspeth, Nagpur - 10 Naperville,
Community of Interest Franchisee
Maharashtra, INDIA IL 60653, USA
http://www.pmanifold.com Mr. Dinesh Jain
+1 630-853-3520
Connecting talent & Making dinesh.jain@pManifold.com
Local companies discoverable
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