Eastern Power Distribution Company of Andhra Pradesh Limited (APEPDCL) is embarking on a drive to provide next generation of customer services unheard of in the Indian power distribution sector. As part of this initiative APEPDCL is launching a series of customer friendly services based on its state-of-the-art centralized call centre. These services will be first launched in Visakhapatnam city from 1st December 2008 and then rolled out to all the 5 districts from 1st January 2009.

Single number for all consumers: All the calls made to 155333 from any where in the 5 districts of APEPDCL will land at the centralized call center in Visakhapatnam. The call center is operated round the clock throughout the year.

Single number for all services: Customers can use a single number (155333) to seek information, lodge complaints (including power failure, billing, payments), inform about power theft, and register service requests (including new service connection, title transfer, category change, load enhancement requests) over phone.

Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS): An advanced IVR system helps the customers to easily retrieve the required information, lodge complaints and place service requests without the intervention of customer representatives at the call center.

Customer facilitation centers: If a complaint or service request requires a fee to be paid to EPDCL or some documents to be submitted, the complaint/request is registered and the caller is requested to visit the nearest customer facilitation center by referring the registration number. All such complaints/requests would be resolved as per the service levels defined by the citizen charter, after the payment of fee and document submission.

Door-step services: If the customers do not have the time or convenience to visit the customer facilitation centers, they can avail the door-step service at a nominal charge. A messenger will be dispatched to customer premises to collect the fee and documents and issue a receipt for the same.

Privilege Desks: Exclusive customer support desks will be setup for high value and HT consumers and senior citizens to quickly register and resolve their requests.

These services are powered by advanced Customer Care and Interaction Management softwares eCare and eCall (of Phoenix mPower product suite) developed and deployed by Phoenix IT Solutions Ltd, Visakhapatnam on Software as a Service (Saas) model. Together they facilitate APEPDCL to offer many such services from concept to delivery with advanced features like call monitoring, recording, reporting, etc.