SCIENCE

Yarra Valley Water recently went live with Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. The Oracle Utilities application delivers the scalability and flexibility required to assist Yarra Valley Water in updating its billing service and maintaining its high standards for quality customer care, now and into the future.

Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing helps Yarra Valley Water efficiently improve customer service to its 700,000 accounts by enabling the utility to easily maintain the software and introduce new products more quickly without the need for major customizations. The implementation replaced a legacy software system that had been highly customized and would no longer meet Yarra Valley Water’s business requirements in terms of efficiency, flexibility and robustness.

With Oracle, Yarra Valley Water can now view all pertinent customer data in one source via an intuitive, easily navigable system. Customer service representatives can access accurate and comprehensive information on one screen, rather than having to toggle back and forth between multiple systems, enabling them to respond more quickly to inquiries and improve the customer experience.

Yarra Valley Water uses the online functionality of the Oracle solution with its third-party interactive voice recognition system, enabling customers to make payments and check their balances via the telephone.

Going forward, Yarra Valley Water will use Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing to enable customers to make account enquiries and pay their bills online.

Supporting Quotes

“The implementation of Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing hails a new era in information technology systems at Yarra Valley Water, providing a solid foundation for future customer service and efficiency improvements. The application – coupled with Oracle’s extensive knowledge and capabilities – will give us the flexibility, integration, scalability and service we need to effectively meet the service standards demanded by our customers while remaining cost competitive,” said Tony Kelly, managing director, Yarra Valley Water.

“We are very pleased to have successfully implemented this new system seamlessly for our customers, thanks in large part to the contribution of our partners in this major undertaking. Oracle’s commitment to a smooth implementation and successful outcome played a key role in this,” said Max Kennedy, chief information officer, Yarra Valley Water.

“Because of its intuitive nature, new staff in the company’s call center can quickly come up to speed using the new system compared to the previous system, and we expect increased staff satisfaction,” said Steve Lennox, acting manager, Billing and Contact Services, Yarra Valley Water.

“Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing provides Yarra Valley Water with the scalability and flexibility required to succeed in this day and age. With Oracle, Yarra Valley Water has been able to improve customer service and billing capabilities for water and wastewater services. We are pleased to play a critical role in their progress,” said Stephan Scholl, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Utilities.