Client Story
Toronto Hydro Launches 7/24 Customer Self-Service Portal
Toronto Hydro is the largest municipal electricity distribution company in Canada and allocates approximately 18 percent of the electricity consumed in the Province of Ontario.
Improving communications, collaboration across social communities of interest and client relationship management including self-service, education and energy rebate programs are critical to profitability goals and sustainability commitments. Find out how Toronto Hydro is leading the charge for other utilities to follow.
About Toronto Hydro
Toronto Hydro Corporation is a holding company which wholly owns Toronto Hydro-Electric System Limited and Toronto Energy Services Inc.
Toronto Hydro-Electric System Limited owns and operates an electricity distribution system which delivers electricity to approximately 730,000 customers located in the City of Toronto. It is the largest municipal electricity distribution company in Canada and distributes approximately 18% of the electricity consumed in Ontario.
Toronto Hydro Energy Services Inc. provides street lighting services to the City of Toronto.
Toronto Hydro’s Challenges
Toronto Hydro had a vision to launch a self-service portal for residential customers and landlords providing fast and secure access to bills, payment history, and account details. Offering services that would be simple to access and easy to use would also include automatic payments and moving requests, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Silos of information across multiple departments, applications and platforms challenged this vision. It would be difficult to provide a complete view of a customer account, enable self-service and tie-into a new Oracle-based billing system without a modernization strategy and seamless integration.
The Solution
Toronto Hydro worked with Navantis to implement the Navantis’ Customer Care Self-Service Reference Architecture for Utilities. Designed for Microsoft SharePoint, the reference architecture for utilities delivers a highly functional self-service web presence supporting the goal of Toronto Hydro to deliver a strong web-based digital relationship, helping residential customers interact more efficiently with the utility.
In particular, Navantis architected a complex integration between SharePoint and the Oracle CC&B system, ensuring a seamless exchange of information for a fully automated and reliable experience for the customer.
The new portal is highly personalized enabling users to manage their accounts and assign privileges from any device. Account details can be accessed at a glance including current balances, payments, payment history and due dates. All account information can be downloaded or printed for manageability and billing features such as pre-authorized disbursement using a highly secure and robust payment engine are available.
The Rewards
As a result of the solution Toronto Hydro has:
- Increased the use of self-service by over 20% ++
- Exceeded registration to “MyTorontoHydro” by 110% ++
- Provided energy consumption reporting to incent better behaviours around energy usage across their client base
- Improved profitability through better management of digital assets and web-site usage
“The successful launch of our first customer self-service portal has exceeded our expectations. Customers can now easily view their bills and payment history, sign up for preauthorized payment and more, at their own convenience and without live-agent assistance.”
Lauren Kirk, Customer Management and Communications Manager
%
Increase in self-service
%
Of registration goal met
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