Baltimore
Gas Electric CRM
According to
the company press release MITEM's call center solutions ring up big
savings for customers ranging from public utilities to financial
services. MITEM Corporation, a provider of integration software and
business applications, today announced that it has added Colonial
Savings to a growing list of customers who have selected MITEM’s
technology as a viable and cost effective alternative to packaged
customer relationship management (CRM) applications. MITEM's
solutions are built on its patented integration platform, MitemView,
and have been deployed in call centers of companies including L. L.
Bean, Baltimore Gas & Electric, EDF Energy, Consolidated Edison,
American Electric Power, Swiss Life and, recently, Colonial Savings.
In a call
center environment, Baltimore Gas & Electric + CRM pulls
customer data from legacy systems and other disparate back-end
systems and presents it to the client in a Windows, HTML or
Macromedia Flash environment. The MITEM approach in Baltimore Gas
& Electric + CRM
eliminates the need for customer service representatives to
laboriously access dozens of screens of information, one by one, to
answer a customer inquiry - service reps can now access all the
customer information they need with just a few mouse
clicks.
Let’s see how
Baltimore Gas & Electric + CRM started and why it started. The
electric-utilities industry in the
U.S. is about to experience the same kind of
deregulation that has swept through the airline and
telecommunications industries with often tumultuous results. Today,
most electric-utility companies are regional monopolies. Protected
by law from competition, they are the sole providers of electricity
to consumers in their service areas. But many believe these
companies are about to lose the protected status of a monopoly and,
in a few years, will have to compete for customers, just like any
other business - on the basis of cost, quality, and service. And,
hence the need for Baltimore Gas & Electric + CRM. Gone were the
days when any company has the monopoly, today is the age of
competition and every customer expect an excellent customer
service.
Baltimore Gas
& Electric + CRM, which handles up to 4 million calls a year,
has been running on a MITEM call center solution for over 18 months.
Baltimore Gas & Electric + CRM solution consists of MITEM's
integration engine and a graphical user interface (GUI) that serves
as an intuitive, easy-to-use interface between its legacy CIS and
its customer representatives. The new client interface, which
Baltimore Gas & Electric + CRM calls GUIdance, was built to
enable call center reps to access the information they need easily
and efficiently, so they can respond to customers’ requests and
inquiries more quickly.
GUIDance at
Baltimore Gas & Electric + CRM is considered the crown jewel of
several initiatives that are saving Baltimore Gas & Electric +
CRM over $1 million dollars annually. Since the deployment of
GUIDance, Baltimore Gas & Electric + CRM has seen dramatic and
measurable reductions in costs associated with their call center
operations. CSR staff has been reduced from 209 to 135. Total staff
is down to 155. In addition, CSRs have increased their in-service
phone time from the low 70th percentiles in 2000 to between 98% and
99% today.
“Baltimore Gas
& Electric + CRM’s GUIdance goes beyond the call center and
embodies the holistic approach of the corporation in meeting
customer's needs and expectations. It’s a strategically essential
part of our business moving forward,” said Alan Stambaugh, IT
consultant for BGE. MITEM's McDonald added, "Deploying a large-scale
Baltimore Gas & Electric + CRM solution is fraught with
complexity and risk. The data conversion aspect of the process
itself can be a traumatic event. MITEM's Baltimore Gas &
Electric + CRM solutions bypass problems like data conversion and
loss of original system functionality. Our customers are amazed at
how quickly and cost effectively we can have a MITEM solution up and
running for their call center. Our deployment success rate stands at
100%."
Baltimore Gas
& Electric's 10 plants provide power to more than one million
customers in the city of Baltimore and all or part of nine countries in
surrounding central Maryland. To meet customer power demand, the company
relies heavily on its Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant. Of the
company's peak capacity of 5,400 to 5,600 megawatts, 1,600 megawatts
- or almost 30 percent of Baltimore Gas & Electric's capacity -
come from Calvert Cliffs.
