Silver Spring Networks has announced a new version of CustomerIQ, its customer engagement platform that enables utilities to deliver personalized and actionable insights to millions of residential and commercial customers, regardless of smart meter deployment status. CustomerIQ 2.0 includes energy billing and consumption information for residential customers served by legacy meter reading systems. The updated customer engagement platform now provides the energy data demanded by commercial customers. With these enhancements, utilities can now offer CustomerIQ to residential, small/medium business and commercial customers within their service territory.
“Utilities no longer have to wait until they’ve deployed a smart grid to leverage our energy web portal as part of changing their relationship with the consumer,” said Matt Smith, senior director of product management at Silver Spring. “With this release, CustomerIQ has become a ‘platform for all,’ with the flexibility to inform and engage all customers at any point in time, and its functionality grows with utilities as they expand their consumer engagement.”
CustomerIQ 2.0 provides utility customers with extensive energy awareness. Features include detailed usage analysis, bill estimates, environmental analysis, normative comparisons, and rate explanations and comparisons. Studies show energy awareness reduces overall consumption, and CustomerIQ has enabled peak load reductions of 7% to 14% as part of demand response programs.
For residential customers on legacy meter reading systems, CustomerIQ 2.0 tailors the customer experience to match the consumption and billing data available on those systems. Such data typically includes a single daily read, so these customers can now view their usage from the previous day and understand how their behavior affects their energy bill. Bringing customers on legacy meter reading systems onto the CustomerIQ platform enables utilities to begin engaging all their customers immediately, rather than waiting until each customer’s meter has been exchanged for a smart meter. Then, when customers do receive their smart meters, they’ll gain a deeper understanding of their energy consumption patterns that comes from higher resolution information.
For commercial customers equipped with a smart meter, CustomerIQ 2.0 delivers more than the typical consumption and environmental data. It also provides an analysis of information specific to commercial customers such as charges for demand, power factor, and reactive power. These charges can account for as much as one-third of a commercial customer’s total bill, so insights into these details are crucial for these customers to adjust operations to optimize against rates, understand their demand peaks and load profile, and otherwise improve energy management. With this tailored information, CustomerIQ 2.0 now enables utilities to extend the benefits of energy awareness and efficiency to this critical customer segment.
CustomerIQ 2.0 continues to deliver its hallmark functionality of creating a compelling experience for customers and simplifying deployment for utilities. The platform’s dynamic rate engine supports all common rate types and effectively ties usage to estimated billing. Its deep analysis, delivered in increasing detail as customers move through various pages of the portal, makes the information easy to digest and actionable. For utilities, the out-of-the-box integration with Silver Spring’s UtilityIQ Advanced Metering Manager and Demand Response Manager software dramatically reduces integration time and simplifies the overall deployment.
