Santa Clara, Calif. – July 8, 2020 – Hydro Ottawa, the third largest energy and utilities company in the province of Ontario, Canada is delivering essential electricity and related services to its customers without interruption, even while quickly pivoting to a remote workforce, with help from Avaya (NYSE: AVYA), a global leader in solutions to enhance and simplify communications and collaboration.
With more than 340,000 customers, Hydro Ottawa is a critical utility company serving Canada's capital for over 100 years. During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the company was faced with the possibility of disruption to their contact center operations while outsourced partners were forced to send their employees home. In less than a week, Avaya deployed a public cloud based Contact Center-as-a Service solution, enabling employees, including contact center agents, to remotely work from home while effectively managing contact center operations and meeting customer needs. Avaya OneCloud CCaaS allowed Hydro Ottawa to make this seamless transition with no interruption of service, ensuring the safety of their employees and enabling customers to continue to engage with the company they depend on.
“It was extremely important that we accounted for our employees’ health and wellbeing while they worked from home, many who were doing so for the first time,” said Mark Fernandes, CIO, Hydro Ottawa. “With the pressure to meet customer expectations and handle a high volume of difficult calls, the last thing they needed was lagging contact center capabilities. Avaya was instrumental in this. The move was so seamless that our customers didn’t even know. With Avaya, we maintained full visibility and continued to get the business intelligence we needed to make improvements and the best decisions for our customers. The investment we made in Avaya has paid off.”
Hydro Ottawa had been working with Avaya on its digital transformation to support the organization’s business strategy, and so had a head start on leveraging cloud communications and collaboration when the outbreak suddenly hit. Roughly half the organization immediately ceased in-office operations and transitioned to a virtual work model, including employees at the company’s contact center. With Avaya, Hydro Ottawa’s employees were able to flexibly and securely work from home, managers maintained visibility from a distance, and the company implemented an intelligent self-service system to help keep live agents available for more complex or urgent issues in less than a week. The seamless transition allowed customers to continue engaging with the company the way they wanted and needed to with no disruption.
Additional Resources
- Read the Hydro Ottawa customer case study
- Learrn more on how Avaya OneCloud CCaaS can create an effortless experience for your customers
- Read Gartner’s report on ‘The Future of the Contact Center’
About Hydro Ottawa
Hydro Ottawa delivers electricity to more than 340,000 homes and businesses in Ottawa and Casselman. For 100 years, Hydro Ottawa has reliably supplied its customers with power, building and investing in the local electric grid. Proudly municipally owned, Hydro Ottawa contributes to the well-being of the community we serve. Its innovative services help customers manage their account and energy use.
