Fortum, an energy company in Finland, uses Trimble’s Operation Management software to inform its customers of district heating outages, planned service breaks, repairs and service restoration by text message or email.
Before acquiring Trimble's Operation Management system, Fortum’s district heating consumers received information about outages from their property manager’s office or notices attached to doors and mailboxes.
“Fortum had already introduced an outage information service to electricity distribution customers, so it was logical to provide our district heating customers with a similar service”, says Juha Kivi, Information Management Specialist at Fortum.
Improved customer service
With the messaging service, the subscribers receive real-time information about outages affecting their property, which has greatly improved customer service. All affected subscribers receive a notification before a planned service break. A notification is also sent when either a planned or unplanned outage begins and when the service is restored. Repair updates and rescheduling also produce notifications. The subscribers can choose whether they want to be informed of outages through text messaging, email, or both. In addition, outage information is published on an online map.
“We have also received lots of positive feedback from property maintenance agents who have subscribed to the service to get up-to-date information about district heating service breaks affecting the properties that fall under their responsibility”, Kivi says.
Automatized outage communication
Trimble’s Operation Management system manages the operational state of a district heating pipe network in near real time. The system has functionalities to plan and manage district heating service breaks and analyze past and upcoming outages, enabling statistics reporting and automatized outage communication.
Outage information is automatically derived from the Operation Management system, but the processes of sending notifications, dealing with subscriptions to the service and managing the subscriber list are carried out by an outsourced messaging service.
“The outage information service has met our expectations, especially because it is very easy to use. Creating and sending outage notifications is virtually automatic in all situations, which means that there is no need to train staff to use additional software or assign dedicated resources to message”, Kivi says.
Outage information service tested by staff
Before release, the text messaging and email service for outage information were tested by over 100 Fortum staff members who lived in district heated houses. During the three-month usability test, altogether 61 outages occurred. An online feedback survey was carried out during and after the test period, and the results were very positive. Approximately 90% of the users found registering to the service easy. Approximately 60% received an outage notification and thought that the message was easy to understand. After the three-month test period 65% were happy with the service, while 31% could not say because they had not been affected by outages and had not received a notification.
“We will be carrying out our annual customer satisfaction survey later this year, and it will be interesting to see how the outage information service affects our customers’ experiences. Intelligent customer communication plays an important part in developing the image of district heating as a modern heat solution”, Kivi concludes.
