The CS Week Expanding Excellence Awards program is designed to recognize and salute excellence and honor outstanding contributions and innovations in utility customer service. The pilot project provided GMP with valuable insight into customer wants and needs, helped define feature and technical requirements, and influenced the roadmap for the current mobile app. that allowed customers with smart meters to track their real-time power usage and control smart devices in their homes from a mobile app. “We appreciate the opportunity to rethink the user experience and create a mobile app designed to truly engage customers.” Released in December 2014, the mobile app builds on the utility’s Smart Home pilot project. “It’s a pleasure to work with a utility that is leading the way in technology and putting the customer at the forefront of its plans,” said Shazir Khan, CEO and President of iFactor. To create the award-winning mobile app, the iFactor and GMP team let design and usability lead the development process. In the next version of the mobile app, GMP plans to add functionality to allow customers to set up recurring payments, manage payment options, view energy generation, and manage smart devices in their homes.

Using the app, GMP customers can view their current bill and bill history, make a one-time payment, view energy consumption, and report and view outages in their area.

The goals of the mobile app were to create a full-featured tool that provides customers with a complete self-service experience while pushing the limits of design and achieving the “cool” factor.

The award was announced April 29 during the CS Week Conference held in Charlotte, N.C., and honors GMP for its customer-centric Emobile app designed and developed by iFactor. Vermont utility company Green Mountain Power (GMP) is the recipient of the 2015 Expanding Excellence Award for Best Mobility Implementation.

Ifactor member