Pepco Wins CS Week Award
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 21, 2009
Pepco Wins CS Week’s “Innovation in Customer Service” Award for Deploying TFCC’s Mutual Assistance Routing System
Columbus, Ohio:Â Twenty First Century Communications (TFCC) congratulates longtime client, Pepco Holdings, Inc. (PHI), winner of the 2009 Expanding Excellence “innovation in Customer Service” Award, presented by CS week and Electric Light & Power this morning at the CS Week Annual Conference.
Pepco was recognized for its outstanding contribution and innovation in utility customer service for implementing the Mutual Assistance Routing System, or MARS (patent pending), provided by Twenty First Century Communications.
TFCC and Pepco collaborated with members of the Southeast Electric Exchange (SEE) to identify mutual assistance needs in utility customer service, and to craft a solution using TFCC’s telecom platform and web-based software. MARS was developed in 2008 through this unique partnership, to help utilities respond more quickly to customers who lose power.
MARS addresses one of the biggest problems facing utilities after a disaster — responding to the influx of customer calls to report outages and get information. TFCC already provides most U.S. utilities with High Volume Call Answering, which answers outage calls and returns restoration information using interactive voice response (IVR).
But, as outages extend into hours and days, customers want to talk to a person. Now, with MARS, utilities can re-route calls from people in storm-stricken areas to customer service representatives at other utilities.
TFCC has the ability to route calls across any of the telecom carriers in the U.S., so location doesn’t matter. The system comes with a simple data screen and a common communications platform for all participating utilities. Minimal training is needed and representatives work from their usual stations.
 Several utilities have already implemented MARS, and the program is receiving nation attention. MARS was also nominated for the S.E.E. Industry Excellence Award earlier this year and was featured in a May 11th story in the Wall Street Journal, Utilities Unite to Upgrade Response During Storms.
