CUSTOMER SELF-SERVE AND OUTAGE COMMUNICATIONS: A CASE STUDY

About Hydro Ottawa

>  315,000 residential and business customers in Ottawa, Canada’s capital

>  Third largest municipal-owned electrical utility in Ontario with 1100 km2 of service territory

>  90% customer satisfaction

>  SAIFI and SAIDI less than 1.25

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Norm Fraser, Chief Operating Officer

SMART METER AND AMI PROJECT >  Project began in 2005 >  All meters replaced by end

of 2010 >  Our outsourced meter-

reading company was used to replace meters

>  Technology is Elster meter and Energy Axis MAS

>  Very few complaints and fewer than 0.1% refusals (now resolved)

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TIME OF USE ROLLOUT

Page 3

midnight midnight 700 1100 1700 1900

Summer weekdays

Summer weekends and holidays

Winter weekdays

Winter weekends and holidays

midnight midnight 700 1100 1700 1900

>  All customers have smart meters

>  Completely re-tooled our meter-to-cash processes

>  Centralized MDM/R

>  Hourly reads, hourly pricing

>  Redesigned bill

>  Enhanced disaster recovery systems

SMART METERS – METER TO CASH PROCESS

4

Meter Data Collection System

(MAS) Smart Meters

Collectors

Web Portal

Meter Data Management

System (AMI MT)

Provincial Meter Data Management

& Repository (MDM/R)

Customer Information

System (CIS)

1 2 3 4

300,000 1,200

$ Send Bill to

customer

Provides customer access to hourly data

and account information

Billing determinants

Data in 24 hr segments

Data per collector

1,520 readings per customer every 2 months

There is more electronic traffic in Ontario from electric utility billing, than from banking…

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>  Customers have access to meter consumption data

>  “MyHydroLink” – 34% penetration

>  Customizable dashboard

AUTOMATING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

AUTOMATING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE >  Electronic billing – 22%

penetration

>  Move-in and move-out requests over the internet

>  Online payment history

>  Profile management

>  Pre-authorized payment options

>  Customized alerts for consumption, dollars spent, bill prediction, percent of peak consumption, payment reminders and collection alerts 6

>  Enhanced IVR automatically links customers to specialized call centre agents based on the type of inquiry

>  Automatic measurement system for customer satisfaction – 6 questions

>  Credit card payments

>  Remote disconnect and reconnect

>  Mobile web application

>  Text messaging for politicians and media

>  Outage maps

AUTOMATING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

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The biggest leap for our customer benefit was enhanced outage communications

RESULTS >  Reduced average outage call duration by 83% from 3 mins to 30

seconds >  Reduced the number of blocked calls (due to a busy signal) to 0.45%

>  Positive customer feedback about ease of use and speed of information

>  Very positive feedback on outage maps

>  34% of customers have signed up for online energy monitoring >  22% are on electronic billing >  25% of moves completed on line or automated

>  20% of customers on automated withdrawal

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LOWER CALL VOLUMES

346,349

292,800

200,000

225,000

250,000

275,000

300,000

325,000

350,000

375,000

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Number of Customers

Number of Calls

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

76% 80%85% 83% 84%

89% 86% 87% 88%

87% 87% 90% 91% 92%88% 90%

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

78%

80%

82%

84%

86%

88%

90%

2011 Avg

Jan-12

Feb-12

Mar-12

Apr-12

May-12

Jun-12

Jul-12 Aug-12

Sep-12

Oct-12

Nov-12

Dec-12

2012 YTD

FIRST CALL RESOLUTION