Utility providers can empower their customers with smartphone self meter reading
Ebin Thomas
Account Executive at Anyline
Customers prefer to have a say when it comes to the energy providers they choose to work with. Now more than ever, that decision is truly based on the service – and how much control they have over it – above other factors.
Customers are looking for solutions that are focused on their experience as users – one that integrates them deeper and more intimately into the energy supplier process. Read on to find out how technology, and in particular smartphone meter reading solutions, empower customers by going a long way towards precisely that.
Customers lack control on current utility processes
In countries or areas where customers aren’t already equipped with smart meters yet, the billing process is woefully inadequate in a number of ways. For starters, it relies heavily on the manual reading of meters. It also requires the manual entry of the value read into a billing system. Both of these two things are inherently error-prone processes. Not only does this “old school” way of doing things take time, but it also doesn’t allow utility companies to provide the customers the information they want in real-time.
A solution exists to involve customers more and reduce the meter reading burden of utility workers, is to allow the customer to send their own meter readings directly to their providers. But this too introduces a few challenges:
- Far too often, customers need to send meter results by phone or through a cumbersome online portal.
- Utility companies still need to verify those readings in some way to make sure that they’re working from accurate information.
Again, this is equal parts resource and time-consuming. It also doesn’t help at all in terms of building a strong relationship with customers.
Why Utility Companies Must Empower Their Customers
According to one recent study, utility providers are still lagging far behind other industries in customer satisfaction. In a lot of situations, customers feel like they don’t have enough control over their choices when it comes to the providers they work with. They may even feel like energy companies aren’t keeping up with their demands for easy, fast and multichannel solutions to their issues.
Things have gotten to the point where it is essential for providers to find ways to engage with their customers. They also need to give them the control they are looking for.
For utilities, this situation is also having a tangible impact on their business. Companies that deploy a customer service app see the difference immediately, for example. Customers who use them change operators up to 40% less frequently because of an increase in satisfaction. Customers benefit from feeling like they have more control over their consumption and, as a result, are less likely to jump ship. They’ll even stay customers up to two to three years longer, too.
In such a highly competitive market where customers typically go from one provider to the next on a regular basis, you need to meet people where they are. You can’t wait (or just hope) for them to come to you. If you don’t provide a customer engagement solution you will lose customers – end of story.
Technology gives power back to the customers
Whether your utility company has a mobile app or a web portal, you can easily include a self meter reading solution for customer convenience.
Artificial intelligence-based optical character recognition (OCR) is a great way to allow customers to scan their utility meters directly with any smartphone or tablet they already have so long as it has a camera. The meter can be read within seconds, eliminating the possibility of errors as well.
This approach brings with it a wide range of different benefits, including but not limited to ones like:
- Customers can easily send their meter readings directly from devices that they’re already comfortable using. They don’t have to contact customer service, which gives them more freedom as to when they take care of this process.
- All data is directly available so that additional information and services can be effortlessly provided to customers. The solution can be used to offer real-time advice on how to reduce or optimize energy consumption, for example.
- Barcode scanning and serial number scanning can even be used to reduce the risk of fraud.
Self meter reading empowers your customers right away
Anyline’s mobile utility meter reading technology can be effortlessly integrated into your provider’s existing mobile app thanks to its software development kit (SDK), or in any system you plan on implementing in the future. This unlocks the fast and secure transmission of meter reading data from customers to their providers.
Not only is it easy to integrate, but it is also backed by hands-on support from customer service teams that are ready and willing to help. The solution works with both Android and iOS smartphones and offers support for common integration frameworks that include popular options like Xamarin, React Native, Flutter and Cordova. It can also be easily integrated into websites or web portals as Anyline’s technology supports JavaScript, too.
If you are interested in empowering your customers with self meter reading, you can try out Anyline’s mobile data capture technology or contact us today!