Data Collection guide

2014 Customer Service Benchmarking Data Collection guide March 2014 Updated versions of the Guidelines and recordings from the webinars are available at are website. www.1qconsulting.com :: Benchmarking Community :: Data Entry Gateway

Introduction • Purpose of this document • The purpose of this Data Collection Guide is to provide guidance and direction in how to complete the detailed questionnaire for the Customer Service benchmark study. It gives instructions regarding the types of answers expected, as well as errors to avoid. This Guide has been described as the “rules” for providing data. • It provides the underlying process models around which the various sections of the questionnaire are organized, to help in understanding the purpose of some of the questions. • The appropriate costs to include, and those to exclude, are highlighted, so that each member utility can provide accurate, comparable data for comparisons. • A few key definitions are provided throughout the document. A comprehensive set of definitions is provided in a separate Glossary.

Scope of the Customer Service Benchmark Study • Field Service • Change of Account • Billing Field Orders (meter investigations) • Credit Field Orders • Order Management • Revenue Management • Credit Office and Outbound calls • Credit Field Policies • Revenue Protection: Office and Field • Customer Contact • Contact Center • Local Office • Self Service • Contractors • Credit Inbound calls • Back Office • Billing • Billing Field Policies • Payment Processing • Meter Reading • Manual • Mobile AMR • Fixed Network AMI CS Support: CS IT, Training, Benchmarking, Executives • Customer Life-cycle: Meter Set to Cash Measures, Policies & Processes Employees: Safety, Staffing Customer: Customer Satisfaction, First Contact Resolution Areas excluded: • Energy Audit/Energy Efficiency Group • Meter Change-out • Account Executives

Initiatives vs. Practices • In many areas of the questionnaire, there are open-ended questions, in which we are looking for insights about how you operate. Answers should be: • Brief and succinct – so that the reader doesn't need to read through an extensive volume of material to understand the message; because the responses will be printed verbatim, don't mention your company name or individual names in your replies • Complete enough to be understood in terms of the practice you are describing • Practically speaking, this translates to 2-3 sentence answers to most of the text questions • For our purposes: • Practices are current activities, programs or processes that have been around for a while. For these, sufficient time has passed in which to assess their success or failure. We mostly ask about practices that have proven successful in accomplishing a specific goal. • Initiatives are new activities, programs or processes that have been enacted recently with the goal of improvement. These are so recent (1 to 2 years) that insufficient time has passed in which to assess their success.

Data Collection Guide Outline The organization of this Guide follows the questionnaire outline: For a number of the sections of the questionnaire, there are follow-up sections in which we ask for “historical data”. Those sections are only to be filled out by companies who are new to the community. For returning companies, the data provided last year will be used to populate the “historical data” sections of the questionnaire. • ST. Statistics • CL. Customer Life-Cycle • FL. Financial • SF. Staffing • S. Safety • CS. Customer Satisfaction • IT. Customer Service I.T. • FR. First Contact Resolution • CT1. Contact Center • CT2. Contact Volumes • SS. Self-Service & Integration • BL. Billing • PP. Payment Processing • FS. Field Service • MR. Meter Reading • CR. Credit & Collections • RP. Revenue Protection

Statistics

Purpose of the Section • The purpose of this section of the questionnaireire is two-fold: • To gather statistical information about the existing customer base, and then, • To gather a bit of information about the organization of the Customer Service functions. • The Statistical Section gathers a variety of demographic information that describes each company's system in terms of size, customer density, etc. This information is used in doing analysis of the results, and understanding the inherent advantages and limitations of the circumstances facing each utility.

Statistical: Customer count • Questionnaire: In the questionnaire we ask for meters and accounts. We ask for counts of both to be separated by commodity. • Accounts Definition: Active accounts in your system. An account is typically used for billing purposes. • Reporting: In the report we will use both accounts and meters as denominators. In some cases we'll multiply the number of accounts by the number of commodities billed on that account. This will produce some adjusted numbers that get at the extra cost of serving an account that receives multiple commodities. • Customer Count (accounts * commodity) = We add the number of accounts for individual commodities to get the total. Roughly represents the number of meters. There are unmetered items and meters that are not counted (such as streetlights). • Customer Count (accounts) = Roughly represents the number of accounts. An account with electric and gas meters gets counted once. • Customer Count (internal) = The count you use internally to represent the number of customers you have. This is the one reported on annual reports and other documents. We use one customer count as the denominator for all of the various costs. So you want to provide the customer count that best reflects your activity level in all of the areas: meter reading, field service, billing, etc. Non-delivery customers can also be included. • Other Customers: Many utilities, especially municipals, provide other services beside electric, gas and water. Most of these we do not want, except for waste. If you also provide other services such as Waste pick-up, contact us and we'll help you to determine how to handle this.

Customer Counts This question allows us to track all the customers you have, by type (e.g. combination or single-commodity, etc.) These details are used as the denominators for many “cost per customer” calculations later. If you can’t breakout C/I then enter into “Other”. We do little analysis on the details.

Financial Section – Using the Cost Model

Functional Cost Model Our approach to collecting cost, performance and staffing information follows customer transactions through each functional area. If you have significant costs in one of the shaded categories, you can enter your cost in the shaded box. No boxes are shaded on line.

Cost Categories Included • Costs can be broken down into basic categories • General: • Company Labor: direct, supervision, support • Contract Labor (including temps, seasonal) • Contracted Services • Technology (see page 17 for listing of technology to include and where) • Function-specific items: • Transaction fees • Materials • Postage • Other

3/20/14 Cost definitions: General

Cost Definitions: functional

Cost Definitions: Functional

Technology Cost Within Function Contact Center: • IVR • ACD • Scheduling Software • Workforce Management (WFM) • Multi-channel processing • Web, Social Media technology costs • VOIP • Web/email routers • Virtual hold technology costs • 3rd party applications (OMS interface etc.) Field: • Mobile data • Scheduling • GPS • Telecommunications • Routing software • Dispatching software Revenue Protection • Tamper plug • Data mining software Meter: • Handhelds • Routing software • Telecommunications • Remote disconnect • MV 90 • GPS • Bills: • Inserters • Web/email, bill presentment • C/I billing software (MV 90) • Payment: • Image processer • Slitter/sorter • Interface w/kiosks • Routing software for off-site payments • Payment Kiosks • Credit: • Behavioral scoring • Predictive dialer • Credit optimization software 16 NOTE: CIS is a separate category

3/20/14 Detailed Cost Breakouts • In order to better understand costs we not only ask for them at the high level, but ask for some breakouts of cost by activity. The diagram shows how the costs relate to each other.

Exclusions • We've excluded costs related to any of the following: • Overheads -- we asked for your standard “adder” for Pensions and Benefits, and for your Overhead rate exclusive of the P&B • Facilities purchase, rent, leasing or maintenance costs. We have found these to be too variable between companies. • CIS purchase or lease costs. We have found these to be extremely variable among utilities based upon capitalization policies, life cycle costs, and chargeback policies. • Costs associated with providing services other than electric, gas and water/sewer. • Capital spending: capital for meter reading, AMI, CIS, and all other areas. We exclude capital costs throughout the basic cost model, and track only O&M. In the case of AMI, there is one question in the Meter Reading section of the questionnaire asking for capital spending.

Write-offs This question captures Revenue and Write-off information. Note the most important fields are highlighted in green. If you do not answer these, you will not appear on the Write-offs per Revenue graph. 3/20/14 • Write-offs Percent = Net percent of total revenue written off (e.g. less any recoveries). Goal is the actual dollar amount written off during the year. This is not necessarily the same as “uncollectibles”, which is in the FERC 904 account for the year, since that can be affected by changes in the provision for bad debt during the year (FERC 144 account). Write-offs are the annual “net” cost of bad debt. In other words any recoveries (less fees) should be subtracted from gross write-offs.

3/20/14 A Couple of Key Credit Definitions • Performance Measure • 1QC will perform some data validation checks to verify that the uncollectibles is determined correctly. In particular, the 904 value should = Write-offs – (change in 144). An example can help: • Essentially, the uncollectibles value varies in the opposite direction of the change in the allowance for bad debt (acct 144) • In Example 1, the allowance isn’t changed from last year to this year, so write-offs and uncollectibles are the same. • In Example 2, the allowance is increased from last year to this one, which has the effect of reducing the uncollectibles value for the year.

Staffing

Staffing • Staffing summary by • Direct Labor rule: a person having direct interactions with a customer or with a customer account is considered direct labor. Everyone else is either supervision or support. Use the 50% rule if they divide their time. • 50% rule: Include a person in an activity if they spend at least 50% of their time on that activity, you can indicate they are 0.5 FTEs. If a person divides their time so that they don't spend at least 50% of their time on an activity they probably should be in the “Support” Group. • Employees assigned full time to a function. Include full-time supervisors and managers, or full-time employees who spend part time in different functions. Include part time supervisors and managers. • Also include employees who spend less than 40 hours per week. • When calculating FTE value use 2080 as the denominator. • Outsourcing: If you outsource an entire function, do not attempt to turn that into FTEs.

3/20/14 Cost Definitions: General

Support Staff • Administrative support • Unlike technical support, administrative support refers to a task that is required in all processes. It is generic in nature and is (for the most part) interchangeable between functional areas. This category includes all secretarial FTEs as well as accounting and reporting activities that are decentralized in a specific activity, treatment of basic business information, scorecards, etc. • Technical support • Technical support includes people supporting work specific to that functional area. It refers to all tasks performed by an FTE in support of a Direct FTE. It is Mission oriented. It takes the form of a particular expertise or knowledge that can only be used for a particular activity or process. Trainers and schedulers are also part of this category. Technical support FTEs will not work directly on a particular case other than assisting direct FTEs resolve particular problems encountered. Their task may also be to analyze the process performance, produce new policies and design new business practices for direct FTEs in order to ensure the activity evolves towards greater performance.

CS Support ARea • Costs, FTEs or activities associated with either the whole CS function that cannot be allocated to another area of customer service or within a CS function that cannot be allocated to the activities described for that function. • Only include people who don't spend at least 50% of their time in a specific functional area. This might include benchmarking/performance improvement; training; directors, vice president. • If training is for a specific functional area, then it belongs with that area. • Do not include corporate allocations, or any HR activities.

Safety

safety • For safety include Customer Service employees when calculating statistics. • This should include direct labor, support, management and supervision for: • Call Center • Meter Readers • Field Service (this may only include part of your Field Service employees or parts of other functions) • Includes: disconnect and reconnect activities, field notices and collections, high bill investigations, energy audits, and change-of-account work • Excludes: lineman, meter shop, meter technicians, gas leak repair • Billing & Payment Processing • Credit and Collections Office • Revenue Protection

Safety • We ask for raw data to calculate safety statistics. The question also calculates the statistics within the question. Do not edit the fields highlighted in yellow that show the calculations. Until some numbers are entered, some of the fields will show “DIV/0!”

Customer Satisfaction

Customer Satisfaction • Questions in this section are presented in the following categories: • Measuring Customer Satisfaction • J.D. Power scores • Frequency of surveys • Types of surveys [transactional, random, all customers] • Methods for administering survey [calls, mail, email, website, etc.] • Survey providers • Complaints (Regulated, Executive, Escalated, Other) • Escalated Complaint: internally received complaint that originates in the company and is escalated for handling to senior levels of the company (Vice President, etc.). This is different than an Executive Complaint which starts there (e.g. a letter to the CEO, COO, etc.) • Organizing To Handle Customer Issues

CIS and CS it

Functional Cost Model – CS IT and CIS costs Our approach to collecting cost, performance and staffing information follows customer transactions through each functional area. CIS CS IT

CIS vs. CS IT Costs • CS IT (as part of “Technology” cost) is all the encompassing technology in a broad sense so it includes any non-CIS and may include some CIS, but is specific to a functional area • for example: ACD, IVR, Work Management, Mobile Data are part of CS IT and belong in their respective functional area (ACD to Contact Center etc.) • If there is a DIRECT allocation or charge to a function of CIS charges (such as usage or system utilization), then that goes into the CS IT, otherwise it is part of CIS • CIS is the system used to to maintain customer information, generate bills, issue service requests, and help “manage” customer relationships by providing utility representatives data, information and insight about each customer's accounts, individual needs and preferences. • Examples of vendor's products include: Accenture's C/1 (Customer-1), Oracle Utilities Customer Care, SAP For Utilities. • CIS costs may be costs allocated to or associated with Customer Service but not to specific functions, such as usage charges, data transfer or use charges, system maintenance charges. If such charges cannot be allocated to a specific function, they would go into the CIS cost column. • Again, verything else such as the Work Management, Mobile Data, Dispatch, ACD, IVR is Customer Service IT and should be specific to a function

These are not included in CIS Costs Contact Center: • IVR • ACD • Scheduling Software • Workforce Management (WFM) • Multi-channel processing • Web, Social Media technology costs • VOIP • Web/email routers • Virtual hold technology costs • 3rd party applications (OMS interface etc.) Field: • Mobile data • Scheduling • GPS • Telecommunications • Routing software • Dispatching software Revenue Protection • Tamper plug • Data mining software Meter: • Handhelds • Routing software • Telecommunications • Remote disconnect • MV 90 • GPS • Bills: • Inserters • Web/email, bill presentment • C/I billing software (MV 90) • Payment: • Image processer • Slitter/sorter • Interface w/kiosks • Routing software for off-site payments • Payment Kiosks • Credit: • Behavioral scoring • Predictive dialer • Credit optimization software 35 NOTE: CIS is a separate category

Exclusions We've excluded costs related to any of the following: • Overheads -- we asked for your standard “adder” for Pensions and Benefits, and for your Overhead rate exclusive of the P&B • Facilities purchase, rent, leasing or maintenance costs. We have found these to be too variable between companies. • CIS purchase or lease costs. We have found these to be extremely variable among utilities based upon capitalization policies, life cycle costs, and chargeback policies. • Costs associated with providing services other than electric, gas and water/sewer. • Capital spending: capital for meter reading, AMI, CIS, and all other areas. We exclude capital costs throughout the basic cost model, and track only O&M. In the case of AMI, there is one question in the Meter Reading section of the questionnaire asking for capital spending.

First Contact Resolution

Definition for FCR, As Presented by 1QC Based on Research and Practices Reviewed • “First-Contact Resolution (FCR) is the percentage of initial contacts that do not require any further contact to address thecustomerreason for calling/contacting. The customer does not need to contact the company again to seek resolution, nor doesanyone within the organization need to follow-up. Ideally, first-contact resolution should be defined from the customer perspective.” (composite from multiple research sources) 38

Subject Areas in the FCR Section • The FCR section is relatively brief, although asking about a very important area of Customer Service. Key questions cover the following: • Self-assessment • Improvements made recently • FCR definitions • Measurement approaches • Scope of FCR activities

Contact Center

Contact Center Introduction • Contact Center covers the following areas of interest: • Use of Call Center (internal and outsourced, including inbound collections and small/mid-sized commercial and industrial account calls) • Use of Local Offices (there is a Local Office section for collecting costs separately from the Call Center) • Use of IVR (internal and outsourced) • Use of Internet • E-mail, fax, letter • Enrollment and contract management for retailer (deregulated companies) NOTE: Although payments by the above channels are included in Contact Center, do not include payment by check, at a kiosk or a payment center; these transactions are included in Payment Processing. Cashiers in Local Office who only take payments are part of Payment Processing. 42

Approach to Local Office Costs This question follows from question FL5, in which the total costs for the local offices are provided. The goal is to understand how the costs are allocated across the services provided in the local offices. As you’re preparing your data, your normal Local Office cost is likely to include costs that we want moved to Payment Processing per our guidelines. This question is a place to report your total Local Office cost but separated into the portions for Contact Ctr and Payment Processing.

Contact Center • What's not included: • Contact center covers every interaction with customers except: • Meter Reading • Field Service • Credit Outbound Calling • Payment by check, kiosk, or payment center • Contacts related to regulatory, complaints, executive complaints, are not included here • Contacts pertaining to large C&I customers (e.g Account Managed) are not included here • As per above, though payments that are made through contact center channels are included in Contact Center, they are also counted as payments in the Payment Processing section. Do not include payment by check, at a kiosk or a payment center in contact center. • Payments made to cashiers (who only take payments and perform no other functions) should be excluded from Contact Center. 44

Contact Center Definitions *Note: We ask for breakout of T/On, T/Off, and Move in question CT315 45

Updated 3/14/14 Contact Center Definitions (continued) 46

Topics Covered in the Contact Center Section (CT1) • Service Level and Measurements • Demographics, Organization, and Scope of Services • Measuring shrinkage • Contact volume management practices • Initiatives • Outsourcing • Workforce Management

Technology – Contact Center • Contact Center: • IVR • ACD • Scheduling Software • Workforce Management (WFM) • Multi-channel processing • Web, Social Media technology costs • VOIP • Web/email routers • Virtual hold technology costs • 3rd party applications (OMS interface etc.) • Field: • Mobile data • Scheduling • GPS • Telecommunications • Routing software • Dispatching software • Revenue Protection • Tamper plug • Data mining software Meter: • Handhelds • Routing software • Telecommunications • Remote disconnect • MV 90 • GPS • Bills: • Inserters • Web/email, bill presentment • C/I billing software (MV 90) • Payment: • Image processer • Slitter/sorter • Interface w/kiosks • Routing software for off-site payments • Payment Kiosks • Credit: • Behavioral scoring • Predictive dialer • Credit optimization software 48 NOTE: CIS is a separate category

Contact Volumes

Counting Contacts • CSR answered calls & IVR calls – completed contacts (not abandons) • Local office – customer visits • Web contact – log-ons to account or hits to a specific type of page (some judgement required, but includes pages that provide information that avoid a phone call) • E-mail/Letters/faxes – incoming and outgoing • Social networking – outbound Do not count paper bill presentments or mailed in customer payments in contact center 50

Data Collection guide