Hoosier Energy continues to be an industry leader on many fronts, including communication with members. The most recent example came when NRECA’s Charu Gupta asked Member Relations Specialist Justin Thompson to be part of a nationwide presentation on the use of Salesforce.
Hoosier Energy joined EnergyUnited of North Carolina, Middle Tennessee EMC and Cowetta-Fayette EMC of Georgia in providing an overview of the cloud-based customer relationship management system.
Thompson made presentations in April and May as part of an hour-long session, providing an overview of how Hoosier Energy is using Salesforce as a central repository for co-op membership information to economic development to a member portal made up of everything from billing to data collection and many points in between.
Salesforce Member Portal
He also highlighted the benefit of having Andrea Hayden on staff as Salesforce Administrator.
Thompson focused on three main points for those contemplating using Salesforce or deciding how to use it more effectively. Those points were:
1. Providing context for your needs and challenges as well as available resource limitations (such as budget and skills)
2. How Salesforce is currently being used
3. Sharing perspective on the pros and cons of efficiency, support and learning resources
After the two co-ops featured in each session concluded their presentation, a question-and-answer time was provided.
“Specific questions were mostly about why we created the recent member activity dashboard, which provided the many touchpoints with different teams in Hoosier Energy a central repository,” Thompson said. “Our use of Salesforce isn’t super customized, but we are using it differently, especially in keeping track of engagement with members.
“What I found is that Hoosier engages with its members as much or more than any G&T, so we’re really setting the bar.”