Our Customer First initiative is more than a phrase; it’s a mantra we’re committed to—at all levels of our organization. You are our top priority, and everything we do is with you and your satisfaction in mind. We dedicate this recurring column to our most important audience, our customers.

Randy Bays President, Sensus

Fall is a meaningful time of year for the Sensus family, especially for me. A little more than two years ago in September 2013, I came on board as president and began a professional journey that while admittedly challenging has been incredibly rewarding. And in late September 2014, we unveiled our first issue of Sensus Customer Connection. In the coming months, there are a number of additional changes we’ll mark as important milestones for the company, too.

The most obvious to the general public is the re-launch of our website in late October. I don’t want to steal any thunder from the story below, but I promise you the improvements you’ll see are many and substantive. And they have one thing in common. They’re all designed to help you get to know us better.

We initiated a number of customer-centric initiatives over the summer as well. Improving product quality is the focus of the new testing facility we recently opened in Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina, bringing our presence in that hotbed of innovation to four locations. There we’re strengthening our engineering might in ways we never could before, bringing you higher quality products, faster.

Through our new customer satisfaction survey, you have the power to speak directly to us and tell us how we’re doing. In the coming months, we’ll comb the data you provide for actionable insights to improve service and quality. Next year we’ll expand the conversation with a full-scale survey designed to elicit input on all facets of being our customer.

Of course, you don’t have to wait until then to share your feedback. I’m certain many of you will be at the 2015 Sensus Reach℠ Conference later this month in Orlando. I’ll be readily accessible to you, walking the event floor and attending the networking events. This year, we’re also implementing office hours exclusively for customers. I invite you to stop in, take five and share a few thoughts about what’s top of mind with you.

Thank you for being such loyal and engaged customers over the years. We’re honored you selected Sensus to be your partner, and we’re excited about the many opportunities the future holds. We know that together, nothing’s out of reach.

With the 2015 Sensus Reach Conference just days away, we’re switching gears and focusing on one of the many customer success stories being highlighted there. After all, who can better share insights and best practices than those implementing Sensus solutions themselves?

This year’s conference will have more customer presenters than ever before. Read on below for a sneak peek at one of the many customer-led presentations you can attend while in Orlando.

Making the Triple Play:  Gas, Water and Electric AMI
Tom Hamilton, AMI gas project manager/customer service superintendent, City of Medicine Hat Gas Utility
Learn how the City of Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada successfully implemented one of the first AMI projects in the country to include all three utility types. Involving 81,000 gas, water and electric meters, this important initiative offers many helpful lessons for other utilities considering their own AMI deployment.

Got a compelling story of your own? One that will educate and enlighten others in the industry? We want to hear from you. Contact Paula Dickerson, and share your story. The next customer highlighted here could be you.

Everything’s getting “smarter” today. Remote monitoring and control has made it possible to adjust your home thermostat while traveling, set your DVR while running errands and use an app to make sure you closed the garage door. Now smart utilities can get in on the act with Sensus VantagePoint™ Lighting Control Solution to remotely monitor and control outdoor lighting anywhere within their service area.

Wake Electric Membership Corporation (Wake Electric) was among the first to realize the benefits of the new solution, having completed a beta trial this summer at its headquarters in Wake Forest, North Carolina. 

"With VantagePoint, we’re proactive, pinpointing problems before our customers even need to call,” said Don Bowman, manager of engineering at Wake Electric. “We can view all of our lights as well as monitor and address issues all from one stationary location.”

The lighting module offers users a full range of programmable control options, including dimming levels, alarm reporting for maintenance needs and lighting performance analytics. Then the Sensus FlexNet® communication network and lighting software lets users keep an eye on all those lights at once—from wherever they’re located. With these control capabilities taking place remotely, they save money, conserve energy and improve customer service.

With its onboard metrology chipset, Sensus VantagePoint also helps public service providers manage power outages. Smart street and area lights can serve as bellwether meters and provide data on voltage, outages and overall power quality. The data helps enhance reliability by bringing power back to customers more quickly.

“These lights are a great source of information that will enable us to better monitor our coverage areas and better serve our customers,” said Bowman. “VantagePoint can immediately alert us to an outage in the network and allows us to respond quickly and notify customers that power restoration is underway.”

Imagine the possibilities when design and manufacturing engineers work in tandem in a reproduction of the factory environment. Working collaboratively, design envisions a concept while manufacturing quickly puts it in production with both on hand to refine ideas and processes.

When issues do arise, they resolve them together without the need to send crews to remote factory locations to troubleshoot, test, run trials and implement corrective measures. Instead, they do all that within walking (even speaking distance) of one another. Time to resolution drops from almost a week to as little as one day—possibly even less.

Together, they test ideas and solutions in hours, not days or weeks, without slowing production on existing orders. Forward-thinking approaches to the opportunities of today—and tomorrow—become routine occurrences, not novelties.

That’s reality, not fancy, here at Sensus. With the opening of our new testing facility this summer in RTP, North Carolina (our fourth location there), we have one more tool in our toolkit to help ensure the quality, speed and innovation of our products.

“At this new location, we’re building our engineering muscle in imaginative ways,” said Duane Graupman, senior director, manufacturing engineering and outsourced operation. “Engineering is able to develop inventive solutions without affecting operations. When a change is made to the production line, we already know the impact of that change and that the result will be a better product delivered to our customers in less time.”

Smarter designs. Better quality. Quicker response times. Enhanced creativity. This facility enables us to bring them all to you and expands our reach to wherever our imagination takes us.

When you engage with a company, you want to know that company will listen to you and move quickly to address any issue that might arise. You want to know that it’s a true partner, invested in your success. That’s the type of company Sensus strives to be.

This June, we launched a new customer satisfaction initiative that gives you the power to speak directly to us and tell us how we’re performing. We don’t just close your customer support ticket. We also send you a survey (limited to one per customer per 60 days) with questions designed to evaluate our performance. Questions like: 

• How well did our technical support engineer answer your question and solve your issue?
• How knowledgeable did they seem to you?
• Overall, how would you rate your experience with Sensus Technical Support?
• What additional comments would you like to share?

The answers to those questions are important, and they give us the power to make things right—quickly and as they happen. With your help, we can identify potential issues and work to solve them before they happen again.

“Our goal is for each customer to be completely satisfied with every interaction they have with us, but no one is perfect,” said Jim Mundell, vice president of customer operations. “Knowing that, we pledge to do all we can to identify disappointed customers, hear their concerns and address them as quickly as possible.”

In 2016, we’ll do even more with the launch of a full-scale survey designed to elicit your input on all facets of doing business with us. Be on the lookout for your survey, and when you get it, share your feedback. We’ll listen. That’s our promise to you.

The range of Sensus products, solutions and services is vast, including sensing and communications technologies, data analytics and services. We help a wide range of public service providers—from utilities to cities to industrial complexes and campuses—do more with their infrastructure to improve quality of life in their communities. It isn’t always easy for us to share important information. There’s simply so much we want to say.

But we’re always getting better at shaping our message, and we hope you’ll agree when we unveil our new website later this month. The product of countless hours of effort, this site provides a clearer picture of the full range of solutions, services and products we offer and how they all work together.

With a new, more vibrant and helpful interface, the site is simpler to navigate. An intuitive browse function makes it easy to quickly find product information. And the content on each page is scannable and simpler to process.

The website is also available in six languages:  English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese. A global company with customers in 19 countries, we want to be certain our readers and visitors can find the information they need in their preferred language.

All in all, we created or rewrote nearly 300 pages to build a new website designed to help you get to know us even better. We aspire to be more than just one of your vendors. We want to be your partner, the company you count on for quality products and services, sage and timely advice, and the one that helps you reach beyond perceived boundaries and limits.

Our new site will help you do just that. It will be live in late October. We invite you to explore it then and discover the many ways we can help you.

In a few days, we’ll be seeing many of you in Orlando at the 2015 Sensus Reach Conference for three days filled with information and insight, networking and fun. Here are a few last-minute tips to help you get the most out of your time there.

The Conference App
Once again, we’re offering a mobile app for you to download on your smart phone or tablet. This free app will bring your conference experience to a new level. You’ll be able to see more, do more and get more value out of the event—right from your mobile device.

Features include:

• The event schedule and interactive maps
• Event news and last-minute updates
• An attendee list so you can connect with others
• Exhibitor and presenter details and links to available presentations

Start your conference experience by downloading the app now. Look for the email sent to the address you used to register and follow the instructions found there.

We’ll see you in Orlando at month’s end!

Almost a year ago, we launched Ideas, an open forum for the My Sensus Connection community. We envisioned it as a place where you could share suggestions for new features or functionality, request modifications to existing products or propose new products that might not even exist yet.

Many of you answered the call and generously shared your ideas, and we thank you for that. For those of you who have been hesitant about offering suggestions, we have just one question:  What are you waiting for? We want to hear from you. We’re ready to listen; more importantly, we’re ready to act in partnership with you on the great ideas bubbling around in your mind.

Join Sensus Channel Program Manager Janeen Morehead and Sensus Marketing Operations Specialist Ray Brown as they present “My Sensus Connection: The Sensus Customer Service Web Portal” at the 2015 Sensus Reach Conference. They’ll introduce you to all the features and functionality of the portal, including steps for submitting an idea and explaining how the voting process works. Then it’s up to you to join the community, share your ideas and help us develop solutions and services that better meet your needs.

If you’ve noticed new energy and excitement around the Sensus Partner and Advisor Network (SPAN), you’re not alone. Members and leaders of the organization have had a tremendous year focusing squarely on achieving each element of the yearlong theme:  Rename, Recommit and Re-energize.

Recapping the year, David Anglin, outgoing chairman, SPAN, and director, regulated operations, Atmos Energy, said, “Our themes went well together, and people just feel really good about it all.”

Feel good they should, as evidenced by the accomplishments noted below.

• In March 2015, a whopping 97 percent of members approved the name change from Sensus FlexNet Users Group (SFUG) to SPAN. The name change was followed in May with the adoption of a new logo, the first in SPAN history. ✔ Rename
• At the 2014 business meeting, it was clear revitalization was needed. Fast forward to today, and the improvement is obvious. Engagement levels are high, and there’s a palpable buzz about SPAN activities. ✔ Recommit
• Membership grew by 13 new utility members this year. Joint subcommittees were held for the first time ever, and SPAN leadership took an active role in helping develop the agenda for the 2015 Sensus Reach Conference. ✔ Re-energize

Anglin invites you to learn more about SPAN by attending its annual business meeting from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 25 at the 2015 Sensus Reach Conference. You can also visit the SPAN booth at the Partner Pavilion during regular exhibit hours.

“One of the primary benefits of membership is learning from each other’s experiences,” said Anglin. “We’re in this together as partners, helping to ensure we all perform at peak capacity. Everyone benefits from participation. Join SPAN today.”

Sensus and our customers will participate in a number of conferences in the coming months. Be certain to stop by our booth and attend the sessions we or our customers and partners are speaking at while you’re there. Visit our website for a complete list of upcoming events.

• Rural Smart Grid Summit
  November 1 – 3, 2015
  Omni Rancho Las Palmas Resort & Spa, Palm Springs, CA
  

• DistribuTech
  February 9-11, 2016
  Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, FL
  Booth # 915

  Sensus customers Mike Counts, electric operations manager, Huntsville Utilities and Don Bowman, manager of engineering, Wake Electric, will present on “Voltage Monitoring by the Numbers”.
  

• TechAdvantage
  February 15-18, 2016
  Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, LA

• Southern California’s Olivenhain Municipal Water District (OMWD) relies on a smart water network from Sensus to better serve customers and meet conservation goals. Including the FlexNet communication system and OMNI™ commercial meters, the network will help OMWD customers monitor usage and leaks, thereby assisting OMWD in continuing to meet its state-mandated 32 percent reduction in water usage.

• With the Golden State facing one of the most severe droughts on record, The City of San Bruno is leveraging Sensus technology to improve customer service and save water. The city will implement a Sensus smart water network for real-time system monitoring to find water leaks, better assist customers and conserve resources. Using the Sensus FlexNet communication system, iPERL™ meters, Software as a Service (SaaS) and the Logic data analytics software platform, San Bruno can better manage and account for each drop of water in its system.

• We send a huge thank you out to the many customers, distributors, partners and vendors who joined us for the Third Annual Sensus Charity Golf Classic. This year’s event raised a record $56,000 to benefit Make-A-Wish Eastern North Carolina. To date, the golf tournament has generated more than $124,000 since it was established in 2013. With the average cost of a wish at $7,500, proceeds will go a long way toward putting smiles on the faces of children with life-threatening illnesses and their families.

• Protecting the interests of our customers is just part of what we do every day. You may have seen recent media coverage about TransData actively asserting its patents related to smart electric meters. We are a licensee of TransData’s smart meter patent portfolio. Our license allows us to use TransData’s smart meter technology in our products and extends to third-party integrated meters we deploy in our FlexNet system. There are thus no unforeseen challenges or hidden costs with your Sensus smart technology program.

• Sensus Vice President of Data Analytics Brian Crow talks about The Path to Conservation and Smart Cities in a recent Energy Central e-newsletter.