AEP energy, a retail electricity and a
natural gas supplier to more than
400,000 residential and business
customers, is transforming their business
model from buying and selling electrons,
which has become commoditized, to
consulting with customers to help them
make the best energy decisions that are
efficient and sustainable. The challenge
is that they don't have a holistic view
of their customers because data is
residing in disparate sources. The
foundation to deliver an exceptional
customer experience lies in the ability
to have a unified view of your customers.
AEP is using dynamics 365 customer
insights to create a 360-degree view of
their customers and reimagine how
they're servicing them by infusing the
insights into their business processes.
Let's go take a look.
Today, energy managers are unable to
provide real-time recommendations to
their customers with customer insights,
the new customer data platform solution
for Microsoft, we've enabled AEP to create that master profile that comes together
with customer and real-time product
usage data and to discover high value
segments based on solar propensity. They were able to create that consolidated
profile without the need for complex
integrations using our pre-built
connectors. They brought together
Dynamics 365, utility usage from regional
transmission organizations, and weather
data. This aggregated data set lands and
Azure, meaning you have full control of
your data while being backed by security
and compliance for Microsoft cloud
services. And with this data sitting in
Azure, you can run powerful analytics
with Synapse. With the AI and machine
learning capabilities of customer
insights, AEP can now precisely identify
customer segments to target with energy
recommendations like this one here,
high energy consumers. This data and
insight can be translated in real-time
influence how a AEP employees better sell and service their customers. For instance,
AEP can proactively dispatch an Energy
Manager to go on-site. The Energy Manager
can see all the specific device details
for that anomaly with their
behind-the-scene meter or a generator.
And looking here, they can see that this
customer is in the high energy use
category and an alert indicates that
they could benefit from alternative
energy options. When looking at this
customer detail further, I see all that
rich information from customer insights
the full contact information, a timeline
of activities, but the thing that I see
most here at the top is the spike in
energy use on hot days that exceeds the
network capacity. The intelligent
recommendations are telling me that the
customer could benefit from solar as a
way to reduce their energy consumption
by 35% and fixed energy as a way to
limit the expected rising cost. Now, seeing
is believing, and I want to make sure
that the customer has confidence in
their purchase decision. With Dynamics
365, product visualize, and the power of
mixed reality, I can help the customer
explore solar panels right here in
person. Now, solar panels can be extremely complex and technical, but seeing them
taken apart makes it far easier to
understand.
Instead of videos and brochures, product
visualize allows the energy manager to
help the customer to better understand
the product, creating a more confident
purchasing experience at the real-world
scale of using mixed reality. This
notation feature allow us to quickly
highlight in context with data, as well
as existing marketing materials, like
this note here about polycrystalline
wafers, which when compared to mono
crystalline, absorbs sunlight better and
harshly cloudy climates like Columbus.
Now, all of this information is linked in
the common data service, so that allows
us to use predictive data
modeling to get an accurate estimate of
the customers cost savings over the next
five to ten years. What makes AEP unique
is their consultative approach to
helping customers make the best energy
decisions. Microsoft and AEP are
partnering together to bring data AI and
mixed reality to create that 360 degree
view of their customers so they can
personalize every customer experience.
Together with their customers, AEP is
redefining the future of energy, and
developing innovative solutions that
power communities and improve lives.
