• American Gas Magazine

When field services and customer service come together successfully, there’s no telling what might happen. For Citizens Energy Group, a delighted customer surprised a technician by popping up behind him because she was so excited to know his exact arrival time—and to see him actually show up.

“Customers appreciate that we have smaller appointment windows and [that they] know that we’re arriving,” said Citizens’ Director of Shared Field Services Melissa Lawson.

Citizens is one of several utilities who, in recent years, have implemented game-changing, comprehensive platforms to bring together disparate systems and data that previously sat in siloed systems. These cloud-based platforms dramatically improve customer and worker experiences by gathering, analyzing and presenting much more information. As a result, utilities are creating efficiencies, streamlining scheduling and transforming how they do business—translating into happier customers and employees.

Just in Time

Indianapolis-based Citizens Energy Group has a unique business structure known as a trust—without any shareholders. “Our shareholders are the citizens of Marion County,” Lawson said. “That’s why the customer journey is so important for us, and why we want to ensure we’re meeting our customers’ needs.”

Surveys and benchmarking revealed that customers wanted to know their technician’s arrival times, so they could plan accordingly. The results inspired Citizens to update its integrated but “a little antiquated” dispatch-field services system, Lawson said.

Citizens found its solution in an industry-leading field service management platform and a valuable feature that shares updates on the technician’s arrival and a photo of the person who will show up at the door.

That “line of sight” made the most significant enhancement in the customer experience, said Dispatch Manager Gary Young. “Having that visibility so similar to other customer-service experiences spoke to the generation that’s coming up,” he said. “They don’t know anything different.”

An integrated team of field leadership and end users comprising dispatch, customer field service, and gas and water field operations collaborated with the IT department to design and build a system faithfully aligned with needs in the field.

“It was a partnership with IT, but the business was really driving what those outcomes were going to be for their team members, to make sure it was going to do the things they needed for their jobs to be improved,” said Lawson.

The system now gives customers a selection of more and smaller appointment windows. Automated scheduling and routing minimize backtracking and fit more calls into less time, making major strides toward the goal of completing more calls before 6 p.m. “We want work to be done in daylight,” said Lawson. “It increases safety and customer satisfaction because customers don’t want someone showing up at 9 o’clock at night.”

Under a single lead assigned to both training and change management, frontline employees experienced multiple renditions of training that kept learning fresh until launch. Field and dispatch employees involved in design-build stepped up as “change champion leads” to help prepare their colleagues for transition, Lawson said. “By the time of rollout, they wanted to see what this new thing would be, and they were excited about it,” he added.

With 18 months of data collection illuminating the new operations, analysis has begun. The data already shows a 5% increase in on-time appointments, and the immediate accessibility of data helped employees decrease emergency response times by adding human intervention at a critical juncture to reach the closest available technicians.

Under the previous system, the problem would have been resolved too, but not as quickly, said Lawson. Now, there is no wait for monthly reports.

“Thinking about how the system is configured, it was easy to find the gap, to reconfigure and reprogram the system to say, ‘I want you to think a little differently,’” she said.

Best of Both Worlds

New Jersey-based PSEG transformed its work management system with a different goal—to maximize field resources by merging the “two different worlds” of short-cycle projects (the typically single-day jobs such as meter exchange, gas leak emergencies, and power outage investigations) and long-cycle projects (infrastructure repair and replacement). The results: More efficient use of resources. Higher employee satisfaction. Streamlined communications.

“There was a lot of talking with both sides to understand what’s really needed,” said Senior Distribution Supervisor Shakira Maze.

PSEG convened its work management and IT departments to revamp a functioning but outdated system that frequently frustrated field teams. Initial data scrubbing and wireframing on PSEG’s natural gas side showed that an off-the-shelf product usually meant for short-cycle work wasn’t adequate to meet the utility’s long-cycle needs. For instance, the one-size-fits-all system accepted only timesheets filed by individuals, without accommodating the utility’s practice of filing timesheets by the full crew for long-cycle projects.

Applying lessons learned, the team established a collaborative relationship with IT and started with the electric side, followed by gas operations. The first step was cleaning up existing data for migration into the new system and assuring regulatory-compliant work was documented according to its strict criteria and data timelines, said Senior Distribution Supervisor Marco Fidalgo.

Streamlining work management for long- and short-cycle projects meant bridging the differences that mutually impact each side, such as the extension of a long-cycle project that delays the team’s deployment to a scheduled short-cycle job.

A new “data lake” for methodical collection, analysis, and application of data makes information more accessible and visible. Based on feedback from field supervisors, PSEG created supervisor dashboards and populated them with “widgets” that easily deliver on-demand data, for dynamic reporting that drives real-time decision-making.

One of the first tools that supervisors go to each day is a user-friendly emissions management component to the system, which automates emissions rechecks down to the date and time. “It was serious and important for us to continue to make [our system] safe for all of our customers,” said Maze.

A methodical training approach started with demonstration days, followed by web-based training, actual hands-on training, plus refreshers and lunch-and-learns. Subject-matter experts answer utility-related questions, but contracted professional trainers help users learn new skills.

In the weeks and months after rollout, listening tours elicited feedback on the system’s pros and cons, which informed additional rounds of training delivered in-house. End users appreciated the effort. “So many times they are accustomed to a change happening and having to deal with it,” said Maze. “We got a lot of positive feedback around the training.”

While employees are experiencing streamlined, more fulfilling workdays, the new system’s full effect comes down to servicing the rate-paying customer.

“We’re able to provide customers with information that probably wasn’t as readily available as it was in the past,” said Maze. “Of course, we’re still calling supervisors and field users because they understand exactly what’s happening, but at a high level, you can see what’s going on with the job. With us enhancing our system and continuing to enhance it, we’re going to be able to provide more information to our customers.” 

Looking to the Future

In 2016, Madison Gas and Electric vowed to become a “utility of the future.” As plans rolled out over the following years, investments in new systems and processes including the deployment of a leading Field Service Management (FSM) platform to manage and streamline field work dispatch, tracking and scheduling.

With its new versatile platform, MGE could customize the automation of multiple functions. That began with the 2021 implementation of a customer care, service orders, metering and billing system that coordinated with the platform’s ability to dispatch and schedule.

Early implementation involved applying platform capabilities largely to short-cycle work. Previously, scheduling was housed with dispatch, who communicated with field workers and back again to customer service; that work was lifted to a cloud-based system that combines customer calls—such as a question on when a crew will arrive—with tracking data, for real-time information on the status of work orders.

“The process used to be very manual, with field workers handed a stack of papers they kept in their trucks,” said Senior Operations Systems Analyst Nick Henneger. “Now, their device tells them, saying, ‘You go here, and you go there.’ It’s a big improvement.”

The system also streamlined the time-consuming, paper-based back and forth of follow-up visits and unplanned pick-up work. Now, automatically generated work orders enter a queue and are scheduled appropriately. “It allows us so much more flexibility,” said Henneger.

MGE designed the system to continue allowing human insight to improve efficiencies for the utility and convenience for the customer. For example, schedulers might coordinate gas and electric work planned for one site, problem-solve any FSM platform glitches, or spot potential hazards that automated scheduling systems might not consider, such as schools or active construction sites nearby.

“The system will understand so much but doesn’t always understand what goes behind the work,” said Henneger. “The schedulers are good at keeping tabs, informing crews, adjusting scheduling as needed and managing backlogs.”

The new system has also expedited emergency responses by sensing priority-one calls and automatically pinging the two closest qualified technicians, notifying dispatch if there’s no response. In most cases, acceptance is immediate, and trucks are rolling. “When you have 30 minutes to arrive, that makes a big difference,” said Henneger.

By integrating their customer information system with their new FSM platform’s data on scheduling, field activities and work orders automatically go to customer service. These real-time updates are reducing calls from customers who want to know the status of their job. “When a truck is enroute, the customer service system gets an update of every status change,” Henneger said. “As soon as the work’s done, the data comes back to the system so we have it available.”

A mix of virtual training, online guides, hands-on interaction and system integrator support familiarized employees with the system. Acceptance among people used to setting their own daily schedules was “an adjustment” Henneger said, but support has grown as technicians have access to work-order history at their fingertips.

“It’s making their jobs more efficient, and I think they all see that and embrace it,” he said. “We’ve been able to work on the system to improve the lives of our field workers and their perceptions of the system. It makes them more efficient, so they can get to customer-facing work more quickly—and that makes customers happy.”

See You at IUCX 2025

The term “customer service” isn’t big enough to contain the vast expectations of today’s utility customers. They need—and demand—real-time answers, responsiveness, respect for their time and acknowledgment of their concerns.

Enter “customer experience” and the pursuit of excellence in every customer interaction. IUCX Conference 2025 (formerly CS Week) convenes utilities in all phases of evolving their customer-facing operations into seamless journeys that deliver customer satisfaction.

IUCX Conference 2025 comes to the Phoenix Convention Center, Phoenix, Arizona, May 6 to 8, with an agenda that updates utility customer-service professionals on the innovations that are driving CX to new heights. Educational content explores the pillars of billing and payments, contact center, credit and collections, digital engagement, disruptors, field services, leadership development, and strategies and analytics. More than 200,000 square feet of exhibits spotlight the products and services that deliver efficiencies.

Dynamic speakers, engaging networking, awards for outstanding performance, and fun in Phoenix are all in store. IUCX Conference 2025 empowers utilities to master the strategies of transformative customer experience. Visit IUCX.org to learn more and register.