Hydro Ottawa Keeps Customers Energized During Time of Crisis With Avaya OneCloud™ CCaaS Solution

Quickly transitioned employees to a secure, flexible remote work environment with no service interruption for customers

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–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
• Learn 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 Avaya

Businesses are built on the experiences they provide, and every day millions of those experiences are built by Avaya Holdings Corp. (NYSE: AVYA). For over one hundred years, we’ve enabled organizations around the globe to win – by creating intelligent communications experiences for customers and employees. Avaya builds open, converged and innovative solutions to enhance and simplify communications and collaboration – in the cloud, on-premise or a hybrid of both. To grow your business, we’re committed to innovation, partnership, and a relentless focus on what’s next. We’re the technology company you trust to help you deliver Experiences that Matter. Visit us at www.avaya.com.

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.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This document contains certain “forward-looking statements.” All statements other than statements of historical fact are “forward-looking” statements for purposes of the U.S. federal and state securities laws. These statements may be identified by the use of forward looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “our vision,” “plan,” “potential,” “preliminary,” “predict,” “should,” “will,” or “would” or the negative thereof or other variations thereof or comparable terminology. The Company has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While the Company believes these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond its control. The factors are discussed in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) available at www.sec.gov, and may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. The Company cautions you that the list of important factors included in the Company’s SEC filings may not contain all of the material factors that are important to you. In addition, in light of these risks and uncertainties, the matters referred to in the forward-looking statements contained in this press release may not in fact occur. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by law.

Source: Avaya Newsroom

Contacts

Alex Alias

alalias@avaya.com