Case Study:
Ameren Email and Text
Message Alerts
The Challenge
In 2012, Ameren began looking for a solution that would provide proactive communications and preference management for its electric and natural gas customers in Missouri and Illinois. The utility’s goals were to reduce inbound call volume, promote customer self-service, increase operating efficiency, and improve overall customer satisfaction.
Ameren had noted that customers frequently called to check on items such as reconnects, energy assistance pledges and other account information that could be easily handled by an automated system. The utility saw an opportunity to reduce the number of inbound calls by sending proactive alerts that keep customers up to date on their account status.
Ameren needed a solution that worked with its eBill program, allowing the utility to pre-load subscriptions for existing eBill customers and to receive an alert when the last contact for an eBill customer is removed from an account so the utility can return to sending paper bills to that customer. In addition, Ameren wanted to be alerted about undelivered messages and to receive training for its call center personnel.
The Solution
In order to achieve its goals, Ameren selected the iFactor Notifi® Automated Alert and Preference Management system, which the utility felt offered the best service and value for its needs. The Notifi solution is a scalable and intuitive alert system that provides proactive and personalized communication to Ameren customers.
Using the system, customers can log in to Ameren’s website to sign up for email and text message alerts or register for text message alerts by sending a text message to Ameren’s short code. In addition, Ameren trained customer service representatives to tell customers about the alert system and ask if the customer would like to sign up for alerts, allowing customers to enroll by phone as well.
May 2015
Ameren Increases Customer
Satisfaction and Improves
eBill Adoption with Email
and Text Message Alerts
The alert system offers customers updates about reported outages, as well as proactive alerts about billing, payments, usage thresholds, and account credit issues. A complete list of the alerts included in Ameren’s implementation is available on the company’s website.
Ameren’s implementation of the Notifi Preference Center incorporates a number of features that help enhance customer communication. For example, customers are able to view an alert only if they are eligible to register for the alert, making it easier for Ameren customers to find and select the alerts they are interested in. When adding a new contact for alerts, customers are given the option to select an email address already associated with their account, which simplifies the registration process. Ameren also includes a set of alerts as default subscriptions for all new contacts. The most requested alerts are preselected for customers in the Preference Center when a new contact is added.
The Notifi Preference Center is integrated into the Ameren My Account website. Using the Preference Center, customers can add phone numbers or email addresses as alert contacts and sign up for alerts such as bill reminders, payment notices, and usage threshold alerts.
As a part of the marketing for the alert system, Ameren created a web page with documents and videos explaining how to sign up for text or email alerts, a list of available notification types, a list of text commands, and a list of questions and answers about the program. Ameren also promoted the alert system using social media posts, bill inserts, and TV ads.
The Results
Ameren’s Notifi implementation launched in June 2013, and outage updates were added in October 2013. After two months of operation, the implementation had received over 36,000 SMS text messages and had sent almost 750,000 messages (combined email and SMS text messages). As of March 2015, the Ameren Notifi implementation had about 375,000 customer accounts registered, which is about 11.4% of Ameren’s customers. The implementation sent and received about 8 million messages in 2014. Bill statements are the most popular subscription, with over 550,000 contacts subscribed to receive bill statement messages.
This graph shows the number of customer accounts registered for alerts from the initial implementation launch in June 2013 through March 2015.
Total registrations as of April 2015, by state and communication method.
With the addition of eBilling to the alert program, customers can sign up to receive eBills using the same preference center interface as other alerts. This simplified eBill enrollment process has helped Ameren increase enrollment in eBilling from about 170,000 accounts in June 2013 to over 325,000 accounts in February 2015, an increase of 191%.
Ameren has also noted a dramatic reduction in calls to the call center, noting that before Notifi was implemented, customers called Ameren as much as three times per day to check on the status of energy assistance pledges.
While there was some initial concern that having customer service representatives enroll customers in alerts would lead to longer call times, Ameren has not seen a significant increase in call times since starting the program. Furthermore, customer service representatives have reported that customers seem very interested in receiving alerts and often sign up immediately. One customer told a customer service representative that she never thought she wanted alerts, but now she loves them for being a helpful reminder about her bills and a confirmation of her payments.
Ameren is continuing to expand the list of alerts, planning to add temperature alerts for rate changes and service request status alerts by the end of 2015. For 2016 and beyond, Ameren is considering
Text Email Illinois Missouri 16% 150,000 100,000 50,000 0 Oper ation Compan y Registrations 197,166 132,327 167,794 97,572 350,000 300,000 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000 0
Enrollment in Alerts Continues to Trend Upwards
Enr
ollments
6/13 7/13 8/13 9/13 10/13 11/13 12/13 1/14 2/14 3/14 4/14 5/14 6/14 7/14 8/14 9/14 10/14 11/14 12/14 1/15 2/15 3/15
features including proactive outage notifications, planned outage notifications and updates, outage reporting and payment authorizations by two-way SMS, payment arrangement alerts, service appointment reminders, and promotional messages about rate relief programs and energy efficiency.
About Ameren
St. Louis-based Ameren Corporation serves 2.4 million electric customers and more than 900,000 natural gas customers in a 64,000-square-mile area through its Ameren Missouri and Ameren Illinois rate-regulated utility subsidiaries. Ameren Illinois provides electric delivery and transmission service as well as natural gas delivery service while Ameren Missouri provides vertically integrated electric service, with generating capacity of over 10,200 megawatts, and natural gas delivery service. Follow the company on Twitter @AmerenCorp or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AmerenCorp. For more information, visit Ameren.com.
About Us
iFactor develops software products and delivers complete communication solutions for the utility sector, delivering information to more than 150 million people in North America through deployments at more than 45 utility companies. iFactor’s products include Storm Center™, the industry-leading platform for utility outage communications, Notifi®, an innovative automated communications and customer preference management platform, iFactor Mobile™ applications, delivering high-value customer service transactions on the iOS and Android platforms, and StreetLight Outages™, an interactive map interface for managing outdoor light incident reports. Visit www.ifactorinc.com for more information.
60 E Rio Salado Parkway, Suite 715 Tempe, AZ 85281 800 631 9839 [email protected] www.ifactorinc.com
