Energy Biz - March/April 2008 - (Page 51) READ REGULARLY UPDATED INFORMATION ABOUT BILLING: WWW.ENERGYCENTRAL.COM/BP.CFM CUSTOMER CARE: WWW.ENERGYCENTRAL.COM/CC.CFM GUIdEBOOk « BIllING aNd CUSTOMER CaRE Winning over customers chaLLenGeS of GrowInG onLIne bILL paymenT by wILLIam opaLka common transaction. By itself, that may not seem like a big deal. Suppose it could be repeated a few times a year. Then suppose it could be repeated hundreds of thousands of times, perhaps millions of times, over the course of a year. That could get some manager’s attention in a hurry. This scenario is not some myth but a tangible result of a company’s move into the work of electronic commerce. That’s what American Electric Power is doing every time it signs up a customer to its electronic billing and payment platforms. And with operating units in 11 states with a total of 4 million customers, it’s not hard to see the advantages. With costs for postage, paper, printing, customer service representatives handling calls and other expenses, electronic transactions have taken on added importance for utilities. While the industry as a whole A comPAny cAn sAve 50 cents on A has been relatively slow to embrace the practice, there is growing evidence that reluctance is changing, from a combination of consumer demand, different management philosophies or aggressive moves by vendors who provide services to billers. While AEP currently has about 6 percent of its consumer bills handled electronically, at about the industry average and nothing really to brag about, it has seen a doubling of participation, from 3 percent, in about three years. Much of that growth is in urban areas with higher penetration rates than the industry average. And it expects that participation to more than triple over the next three years, approaching 20 percent. “If we doubled, from 3 to 6 percent in three years, then it’s not hard to see it tripling in the next three years to nearly 20 percent because the growth more recently has been exponential,” said Bill Crawford, AEP’s manager of www.energycentral.com E n E rgyB i z 51 http://WWW.ENERGYCENTRAL.COM/BP.CFM http://WWW.ENERGYCENTRAL.COM/CC.CFM http://www.energycentral.com
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