E.ON chooses TOA Technologies' ETAdirect to manage smart meter roll-out to millions of customers in the United Kingdom

LONDON and CLEVELAND, May 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- When E.ON, one of the UK's leading power and gas companies, considered its upcoming smart meter roll-out, it established a goal to successfully replace eight million meters by 2020. This presented a big challenge and a great opportunity – to meet a tight, upcoming deadline while also positively impacting the relationships with its customers. To address both, E.ON, which supplies power and gas service to millions of domestic, small and medium-sized enterprise and industrial customers, selected TOA Technologies and its industry leading ETAdirect field service management solution.

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Recognizing that a smart meter installation is an opportunity to have a meaningful face-to-face connection with customers, E.ON evaluated its customer service strategy as a key part of its smart meter roll-out. Selecting the ETAdirect solution suite from TOA Technologies will allow E.ON to deliver a differentiated customer experience while simultaneously benefiting from the following:

• Using information about how individual employees carry out their work, E.ON will be able to predict with a high degree of accuracy when appointments will happen and how long they will take.
• E.ON will be able to communicate accurate appointment status information to customers throughout the appointment process, providing reminders beforehand and empowering customers to provide feedback, including the ability to reschedule appointments if necessary.
• E.ON will increase its smart meter technician teams during the mass roll-out stage, and fully leverage the capabilities of ETAdirect to efficiently schedule and manage a multi-skilled workforce.

"With the roll-out of smart meters across Europe, utility field service operations have an enormous opportunity to reconnect with their customer base in a way that builds long-term loyalty and trust. The mandate to replace all meters in Europe by 2020 is a catalyst for the utilities industry to rethink the way they run their field operation businesses," said Yuval Brisker, co-founder and CEO of TOA Technologies.

"What companies like E.ON found is that every customer is special, and every smart meter technician is unique. Thus, every appointment should be predicted, created and scheduled with the uniqueness of the individual customer and employee in mind. Empowered with this approach, E.ON will join TOA's existing worldwide base of customers from utility, retail and insurance companies to cable and telecoms providers, who are all focused on improving field service efficiencies and reducing costs, all while enhancing the customer experience," said Brisker.

Chris Lovatt, head of field operations at E.ON, said: "We want to install eight million smart meters in our customers' homes by the end of 2019 to help put them in control of their energy use. We can only do this if we have our customers' trust and support. So we'll continue to work to find innovative solutions that help make the process of installing smart meters as easy and convenient as we can for our customers through partnerships such as this one with TOA Technologies."

For more information about how TOA Technologies is improving field service management for utilities, go to http://www.toatech.com.

About E.ON UK

• E.ON is one of the UK's leading power and gas companies - generating electricity, retailing power and gas, developing gas storage and undertaking gas and oil exploration and production. It is part of the E.ON group, one of the world's largest investor-owned power and gas companies. E.ON employs around 12,000 people in the UK and more than 79,000 worldwide;
• In the UK, E.ON supplies power and gas to around five million domestic, small and medium-sized enterprise and industrial customers - meaning the company has to buy approximately 122.7 billion kWh of power and gas each year to meet their needs. E.ON also offers innovative energy services and technologies tailored to meet its customers' needs, and is helping customers become energy efficient by encouraging them to insulate their homes, moderate their energy usage and even generate their own power;
• E.ON's Reset Review continues to identify and discuss changes with customers through its 28,000-strong YourSay panel, its independent Customer Council comprising business leader Allan Leighton, ex-MP and Select Committee chair Paddy Tipping and E.ON Customer Service Advisor Joanne Sheridan, its 1,000-strong MySay employee panel and through discussions with consumer advocacy groups such as Which? and Consumer Focus. Changes made to date include: helping customers control their bills: fair prices, simple products, transparent profits, a fairer way of paying: providing stability to help households budget, improving customer service: consistency, easier contact, and the confidence to complain;
• E.ON has topped several categories – including best for overall customer satisfaction, best value for money and best reward scheme – to be voted Britain's favourite energy supplier 2012 in the uSwitch.com Customer Satisfaction Awards. The independent report and awards are published annually and are based on a YouGov poll of over 5,000 energy customers;
• E.ON's generation portfolio includes world-class gas-, coal- and oil-fired power stations. E.ON is a market leader in combined heat and power (CHP), and is one of the UK's leading green generators with 22 wind farms and the UK's first wave power generator, with another 1,500MW of renewable capacity under development;
• One of the many ways E.ON leads the energy industry is through its commitment to market liquidity and transparency as evidenced by its actions on the day-ahead UK power markets including the N2EX auction. E.ON was the first company to sign a gross-bidding agreement with N2EX and leads the market with a volume equivalent to some 60% of E.ON UK's generation activity being traded so far this year.

About TOA Technologies
TOA Technologies is the leading provider of field service and mobile workforce management applications. ETAdirect, TOA's patented platform, improves customer service while dramatically reducing operational costs and delivering immediate and lasting return on investment. As the industry's only complete on-demand solution, ETAdirect uses time-based pattern recognition and predictive analytics to provide the most advanced and accurate field service management application on the market. ETAdirect reduces customer wait times while dramatically increasing field workforce efficiency. TOA's solutions are cloud-based, quickly deployed, highly configurable and easily integrated with existing CRM, ERP and other solutions.

Across four continents, ETAdirect manages mobile workforces for some of the world's most recognizable global brands in the satellite/cable/broadband, telecom, utilities, insurance, home services and retail industries. Named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management, TOA Technologies is headquartered in the United States and has offices throughout Europe, Latin America and Australasia.

Media contact
Morgan McPhearson
216.925.5972
[email protected]

Available Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click appropriate link.
Yuval Brisker
https://profnet.prnewswire.com/Subscriber/ExpertProfile.aspx?ei=107743

SOURCE TOA Technologies