Utilities with several distinct subsidiaries face a persistent challenge: how do you move as one when each part runs independently? Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (CUC) wasn’t just asking that question, they decided to solve it.
Operating across multiple states with subsidiaries serving gas, propane, and electric customers, CUC knew the future wouldn’t wait. Customer expectations were shifting fast, and internal complexity was growing. This highlighted a crucial push for a digital transformation in utilities. The strategy? Start with the digital experience. Make it cohesive, scalable, and designed for growth.
The Problem: Complexity That Slows You Down
Every subsidiary had its own systems. That meant silos, redundant processes, and inconsistent experiences. It also meant higher costs, longer rollout times, and a lack of shared visibility across business units. This prompted a broader push to unify the CUC’s customer service and engagement across all subsidiaries and major channels, including the call center, IVR, and customer portal.
The Move: Build Once, Deploy Many Times
As part of a five-year transformation journey, CUC joined forces with avertra to bring this vision to life, defining a single, adaptable digital self-service portal built on the MiCustomer digital experience platform. One configurable model that adapts to each business, built once and deployed many times. The objective: enable subsidiaries to modernize faster, onboard without friction, and operate on a consistent foundation that supports a connected, channel-agnostic experience.
To ensure long-term success, the utility focused on putting the right building blocks in place from the start, creating a strong foundation to support future features like automated move-in/move-out, payment arrangements, interactive billing, and chatbots. With this groundwork in place, introducing these features will help deflect calls, automate routine tasks, give customers faster, more convenient service, and free employees to focus on delivering exceptional support.
Launched May 2025: Florida City Gas, First Proof Point
With the official kick‑off in May 2025, CUC celebrated a significant milestone: the successful launch of a modernized digital portal for the first subsidiary, Florida City Gas. Key outcomes included:
- A modernized self-service experience, built around real customer needs:
One portal, built for everything: account management, service start/stop, billing insights, payments, program enrollment, support, and more, all through a sleek, responsive interface that supports guest access and multi-account management by default.
- Operational intelligence in real time:
With live insights into customer behavior and activity, employees now have the clarity and confidence to work more efficiently, creating a foundation for alignment as CUC continues to scale the digital portal across its utility network.
- Clean UAT, on-time execution
Business users were involved early, ensuring a smooth UAT cycle with no major issues. Clear alignment between teams, combined with rigorous testing and strong communication, led to an on-schedule launch, laying the groundwork for future rollouts to follow the same disciplined path.
- A blueprint for scaling transformation
This first deployment established the technical architecture, business processes, and implementation approach that will now guide future subsidiary rollouts, significantly reducing effort and accelerating delivery timelines.
What’s Next: From First Launch to Full Network
With the first subsidiary, Florida City Gas, live, Chesapeake Utilities Corporation is now preparing to expand the digital portal to other utilities in scope, including Florida Public Utilities, Elkton Gas, and Sandpiper Energy, using the same proven approach. Each launch aims to be faster, more seamless, and aligned with the enterprise’s vision: a unified, agile, customer-first digital experience across all operating subsidiaries, building on the groundwork already in place laid to enable future features to enhance the customer and employee experience.
