Best practice
SMS: a mobile solution for customer service
Riding the wave of its success, the SMS Info service put in place by Veolia Voda, the Czech subsidiary of Veolia Water, is being expanded to delivering ever more effective services.
From 2008, customers will be able to receive invoicing and meter-reading information directly to their cellphones, in addition to the existing updates on the status of the water system.
Source: Planète Veolia, n°19
"INFO VEOLIA VODA: Dear Customer, due to works on the Prague 3 - Vinohrady - water pipes, the water supply will be interrupted on October 11, 2007 from 8:00 a.m. until ..."
Free assistance
To promote the service, Veolia Voda launched a large-scale communication campaign via its consumer magazine, Voda pro Vas, and its Web site. Advertising campaigns in doctors' waiting
rooms along with articles in regional newspapers helped to make consumers aware of the new management mode.
Prague, with its population of 1.4 million, was selected as the test city. The results are highly encouraging: 6,000 customers have already subscribed to the service. SMS Info has now been extended to the entire country, and today, more than 15,000 customers have already signed up for this entirely free assistance.
"Today, information about our services has become just as important as the services themselves. We have no doubt that in the future, real-time information regarding the water supply will play an even more essential role in confirming our leadership," predicts Philippe Guitard, Veolia Water's Director for Central Europe and Russia.
11 Million cellphones for a population of 10 million people
Accordingly, SMS (Short Message Service) text messages seemed like an obvious choice for Veolia Voda, when it rolled out its SMS Info customer service activity.
Since 2006, the service has kept customers informed about any unusual incidents or works planned on the water supply system. Soon, they will also have the option of receiving information on the date of their next meter-reading and invoices.
Staying close to customers
The SMS Info service was developed by Com- Gate, a company specializing in communication using the Short Message Service protocol, in cooperation with O2 (Veolia's telephone operator). The technical solution affords significant communications capacity (up to several thousand messages can be sent in under 30 minutes in an emergency), at a moderate cost to Veolia.
In the future, Veolia Voda would like to use this SMS tool to inform customers about water quality and thereby clinch its role as a pivotal player in public health. To date, Veolia Voda is the only water operator in the Czech Republic to offer this service, which keeps the company "close to its customers.
In the future, Veolia Voda wants to position itself as a pivotal player in public health by giving customers water quality information.