Call Center and Customer Service for Utilities in SAP Cloud for Customer

SAP is providing more and more Industry Scenarios to their Cloud for Customer (C4C) solution. In the past colleague Guus explained more about the Retail Industry Solution. Now it is time to have a closer look at one of the other (new) industry solutions; Utilities. SAP C4C now integrates with SAP IS-U

In the past 2 releases (1505 and 1508) SAP added a lot of new functionality to the utilities solution of C4C. This blog will focus on the Utilities Call Center and Customer Service capabilities in C4C. It shows which scenarios are covered and we will take a look at the administrator tasks that must be performed.

Utilities Scenarios

In the picture below you see a typical customer service process within a utilities environment. This process is used as a starting point to have a better understanding of the utilities capabilities within C4C.

A customer service representative in a call center environment of an energy supplier can be contacted via all kinds of channels. C4C supports different communication channels like phone calls (CTI), live chat, social media and e-mail. Every interaction via one of these channels is recorded in a ticket.

Search & Identify Customer

From the ticket queue a customer service representative picks up the customer request and starts processing it by first searching for the customer. This search can be done directly in the C4C system or can be extended in the connected SAP IS-U system. For the first search an administrator needs to load some utilities specific data into your cloud system. This can be done by scheduling a few data load reports in your SAP IS-U system (see Reports paragraph in this blog). The extended search allows the customer service representative to search on specific utilities data which is not transferred to C4C. If the standard search fields do not match your requirements you can extend both searches with your own custom fields via PDI/SDK development.

Customer overview of Utilities specific info

After identifying the right customer, C4C directly gives the customer service representative a complete overview with the following utilities specific customer data:

Contract accounts and contracts
Usage overview
Financial status (billing history and payments)
Interaction Records

The Utilities Contract details screen shows information like Service address and Installation. The customer service representative can start processes like Move-In, Transfer (move-in/move-out) and Enter Meter Readings.

The Utilities Financials screen gives an overview in two sections. Next to the header, where the total credit amount for the customer is visible, there is a section for invoices and payments. Here, invoice corrections can be performed.

Last but not least is the Utilities Service order screen. Here, service orders can be created, changed or canceled. The service orders are integrated with SAP IS-U. Depending on your scenario they can be scheduled in your external planning tool or in the C4C planning tool.

Covered Utility Processes

After gathering the customer information from the different Utilities screens a customer service representative can start different processes based on the customer request that was picked from the ticket queue.

Typical utility processes that can be started from C4C are:

Change customer master data
- Update customer address
- Change contact details
Move in & Move Out (integrated with SAP IS-U)
Transfer (integrated with SAP IS-U)
Enter Meter Readings (integrated with SAP IS-U)
Service order management (integrated with SAP IS-U)
- Install new device (e.g to smart meter)
- Power outage
Complaint management

The ticket can be closed after the completion of one of the above processes and final communication to the customer. All past communication with the customer can be found on the Interaction Records tab of the customer view.

Set up for administrators

To make all of the above available for end-users an administrator has some work to do. Besides the fine-tuning and scoping the most of the work will be in setting up the integration with the connected and configured SAP IS-U system and the data loads from this system.

Prerequisites:

Connection with SAP IS-U via SAP PI
Configured SAP IS-U system
Utilities specific configuration Data loads for SAP IS-U to C4C
Latest support pack for SAP IS-U and SAP PI (needed for the integration and reports below)

Scoping

In the scoping section you need to mark the check box under Industry Solution => Utilities Call Center and Service.

Fine tuning

In the fine-tuning some activities are available which you can use to support your Utility Call Center and Service processes:

Maintain Business Agreement Class
Maintain Payment Method Code
Maintain Service Types
Maintain Contract Processing Status
Maintain Reversal Reasons

Reports

The following reports you must schedule in your SAP IS-U system to have the latest utilities specific data in C4C:

Configuration data for SAP IS-U: COD_UTILITIES_CONFIG_UPLOAD (one time)
Contract Accounts: COD_UTILITIES_ACCOUNT_EXTRACT
iBases: COD_INSTALLED_BASE_EXTRACT
Connection Objects: COD_CONNECTION_OBJECT_EXTRACT
Installation Points: COD_INSTALLATION_P_EXTRACT
Installations: COD_INSTALLATION_EXTRACT
Hierarchical Relationships: COD_HIERARCHY_RELATION_EXTRACT

Wrap up

Since the 1508 release the SAP Cloud for Customer Utilities Call Center solution is a complete customer service solution for utility companies. It covers the most common utility scenarios from a Call Center and Customer Service perspective. The addition of some new core functionality together with the integration with SAP IS-U, C4C service components and the different communication channels (phone, e-mail, chat, social media) a customer service agent can handle all kinds of customer requests. From a technical point of view the integration with SAP IS-U and the data loads are the key subjects during the technical part of the implementation.

Call Center and Customer Service for Utilities in SAP Cloud for Customer