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© 2014 Portland General Electric. All rights reserved. Meeting Consumer Expectations One Payment at a Time October 21 st 2014 Rick VanBeek Kaitlin Pomeroy
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2 PGE is a regulated investor-owned utility engaged in the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity. Oregon’s Largest Utility Headquartered in Portland 2,596 employees 833,000 customers 43% of Oregonians depend on PGE for electricity Our Company
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3 Revenue Collections Org Structure Rick VanBeek Supervisor Cyndie Gomez Supervisor Eric Houger Supervisor Community Offices Electronic Bills & Payments Cash Remittance Print & Mail Services 6 Offices 24 FTE 3 FTE7 FTE13 FTE Terry Davis Manager
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4 Payment Options Web Checking (One-time or Recurring) Credit/Debit Community Office Cash Check Credit/Debit Gift Card Cash Remittance Check Gift Card Western Union Cash Debit Card VCOM / Softgate Cash IVR Check (One-time) Credit/Debit Consolidators RPPS Checkfree Text Web Enrolled Checking
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5 Transactions by Channel
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7 Revenue by Channel
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9 Cash Remittance o Lockbox Change Community Offices o Advanced Functionality ATM Pilot Electronic Bills & Payments o Absorbed Fee Bank Card Payment Initiatives
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10 Cash Remittance Lockbox Change
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11 Equipment
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12 SUPERVISOR LEAD/ SYSTEM ADMIN PRODUCTION KEYING NON LIGHT & POWER EXCEPTION POSTING / KEYING Staffing
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13 Primary Driver: Image Cash Letter Secondary Drivers Bill Pay/Exception Checks Check and List Case for Change?
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14 RFP Process Site Visits Employee Engagement Requirements Gathering Core Payment Processing Aperta was a Partner What Went Well
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15 Our account number was inconsistent Coordination with IT (work changed teams) Developer onsite for installation was not the developer who customized our application from requirements Single sourced with understanding of the system Knowledge shift from experienced team members to team members more comfortable with technology Challenges
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16 Drove Company Decision Not to Outsource Saved over 100K in annual costs Lower cost service agreement Eliminated Bank Courier Reduced an FTE Immediately Plans for an additional FTE reduction Approx: 40% of Exception Payments are now Automated Results
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17 Community Offices Advanced Functionality ATMs
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18 Primary Driver: ATM for Customer Convenience Case for Change?
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19 CardTronics willingness to conduct a year long pilot ATMs did not require much of an effort for PGE Established relationship with Softgate The ability for customers to pay by Visa An ATM to withdraw cash to make cash payments Ability to pay other bills at our walk-in location What Went Well
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20 Averaging only 400 Payments a month at two locations Customers are frustrated with how many steps are required to make a payment Customers have not adopted the ability to pay other vendors at the volumes we expected Higher levels of down time in one location Employees felt they were being replaced and didn’t promote the functionality Results
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21 Decided to end the pilot in February 2015 What we would have needed to move forward? -More user friendly user experience with not so many steps required to pay their PGE bill -Make PGE the landing page -Payment posting in real-time -Automatically cancel disconnects/send for reconnect -Let the customer make the choice on the receipt method; print, email, text, etc. -Show account balance after payment made or on receipt Moving Forward
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22 Electronic Bills & Payments Absorbed Fee Bank Card
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23 Primary Drivers: #1 Request from Customer Feedback Trigger o Peer/Neighbor Utility Got Approved in Rates Case for Change?
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24 Can we predict our Adoption Rate? Challenge
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26 Feb: Submitted Rate Case Apr-May: Numerous Data Requests June: Settled for 500K with a go-live date of July 1st 2013 Process
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27 Feb: Submitted Rate Case Apr-May: Numerous Data Requests June: Made decision to split Residential and Commercial Customers and change go-live to November Sep 30th: Went live with the absorbed fee model 2014 Process
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28 The Customer Experience
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34 Results
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35 Have a multi-year card strategy Ensure you have organization commitment Partnering our card program with another initiative would have been helpful Lessons Learned
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36 Thank You
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