Communications Excellence: Halton Hills Hydro

COMMUNICATIONS EXCELLENCE:

HALTON HILLS HYDRO

Better Customer Input at Less Than One-tenth the Cost

Meaningful customer engagement is an important part of building a utility’s multi-year Distribution System Plans. We all want our customers to “have their say” on these plans, yet effectively mobilizing customer input is challenging and resource intensive; and all of the conventional outreach methods have their inherent limitations.

Halton Hills Hydro was recognized with this year’s Communications Excellence Award for an innovative and highly effective alternative to customer engagement as part of its cost-of-service application. Using an interactive customer engagement website – https://haveyoursay. haltonhillshydro.com – the utility was able to not only inform, but also engage and collaborate widely on its plans, and at a fraction of the cost of conventional engagement methods.

“Gaining input from a wide range of customers is an important part of our planning process,” said Art Skidmore, President & CEO of Halton Hills Hydro. “This online platform provided us with an innovative way to engage with our customers in an extremely cost-efficient manner.”

The website, which was launched in July 2019, featured an Halton Hills Hydro’s mission is to provide electricity initial ask for input in the form of a video from Skidmore. The distribution excellence in a safe and reliable manner. site provided a variety of channels – including surveys, polls At Halton Hills Hydro, our brand, “We are Community”, and idea forums – which were designed to gather a more represents our actions and goals. It is a vision created precise understanding of customer needs and preferences, in an inclusive approach that engaged customers in a conversation about reliability, safety, automation and cost. While an external vendor hosted the site, the branding, content, surveys and marketing materials were developed collaboratively by our employees that represents our mission statement and objectives. It is our goal to provide our customers with the ideas, tools and information that give them the power to make the best choices for their energy needs. entirely in-house by Halton Hills Hydro staff. This approach had the benefit of better enabling adjustments to processes and content based on participant feedback, as the engagement unfolded. “Managing the website internally COLLABORATION INTEGRATION provided an easy way to adapt messaging to respond to customers’ questions and interests,” said Jennifer Gordon, Project Manager, Halton Hills Hydro. “This allowed us to more fully engage with our customers than we could have done through conventional methods.”

Information pages and educational materials – including a highly successful post entitled: “Why don’t we bury powerlines?” – were added based on questions and input that was Next Generation Utility Software received, The platform was promoted via email, which resulted in a high rate Electric Water Gas Municipal Tax of conversion to completed surveys. It was also promoted extensively by all of Implemented on JOMAR Private Cloud Halton Hills Hydro’s social media channels, on its corporate website, through business community newsletters, and at local events including a utility open house. It resulted in high rates of engagement and awareness, and good dialogue on crucial considerations such SaaS Model Virtual Marketplace High Availability Disaster Recovery Cyber Security Managed Services Self-Service Portal Customer Information System Meter Data Management ERP Financials Integration Web Services: AMI MDM/R GIS SCADA OMS as the balance between electricity costs and reliability. By the end of the engagement period, 561 survey On Premise solution available responses were received along with 152 responses to quick polls and a number of ideas were contributed for discussion.

At less than 10 per cent of what conventional approaches would have cost, this engagement process delivered excellent input for Halton Hills Hydro 38 years 10 countries 4 continents to help inform its planning and application. The site remained live into 2020, providing a means by which the utility’s customers can continue to keep ‘Innovation Creates Opportunities’ up-to-date on their local distribution system planning process. sales@jomarsoftcorp.com www.jomarsoftcorp.com Tel: 519-740-0510