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Puget Sound Energy Launches Breakthrough Customer Web Portal

Posted on: Tuesday, 6 September 2005, 15:01 CDT

Puget Sound Energy (PSE), a Bellevue, Wash.-based electric and gas utility, recently launched the My PSE Account -- a customer dashboard -- on its Web site, providing bill payment and analysis capabilities that help customers proactively manage their energy costs. My PSE Account provides personalized benchmarks of costs as compared with similar homes, causes of bill changes, hourly use analysis, the savings of potential rate options, examination of the costs of appliances, and what can be saved by managing how those appliances are used.

Nexus Energy Software was chosen to provide its ENERGYprism(R) Web-based energy bill analysis software system as the basis for PSE's customer dashboard. The ENERGYprism application is also supporting PSE's customer service phone center representatives with similar tools to help them respond to high bill inquiries, allowing calls to be handled quickly and consistently. ENERGYprism's bill analysis is based on advanced models that use bill history and interval meter data as well as weather and customer-provided information.

"We are very excited about this," said Darren Brady, PSE's vice president of customer services. "We've already received very favorable feedback by e-mail from our customers who have used the My PSE Account. From a customer service transaction standpoint, the dashboard will be the focal point of moving our customers through the Web. From a true self-service perspective, it will be our portal for our customers to interact with us for customer service functions.

"The Web is going to become more and more of a presence in utility customer service," Brady explained. "With the success we've had with the Internet through electronic billing and the Nexus programs, and with the infrastructure we have in place, such as our AMR technology, it's a good time for us to enhance our platform and move it forward."

My PSE Account extends PSE's successful prior deployment of Nexus' energy efficiency software tools used on the Puget Sound Energy Web site as well as for driving personalized energy efficiency content to customers via e-mail. In its first month, My PSE Account enrolled 7,000 users, and the use of the existing Web energy efficiency site rose 50%.

"We are pleased to be part of Puget Sound Energy's campaign to transform how its customers look at energy," remarked Harvey Michaels, chairman and CEO of Nexus Energy Software. "PSE's leading-edge My PSE Account is off to a great start in attracting and satisfying users through the Web as well as through phone-based customer service and should easily surpass the 12-15% annual customer use rates we've seen elsewhere. In addition, we're already seeing that by providing online customer service, more PSE customers are utilizing the existing online energy efficiency tools to manage their costs and get more value out of the daily energy usage information PSE collects."

About Nexus Energy Software

Nexus' proven analytics-based software solutions provide energy companies with greater customer insight and more effective customer interactions across all customer channels, while enhancing key back-office enterprise functions. Nexus' browser-based product lines work together to transform both energy company and customer views of energy, in order to reduce costs of business services, optimize assets, and reduce natural resources required to meet demand, while becoming more responsive to customer needs.

Nexus' solutions, in use by more than 75 energy companies worldwide, can be viewed online at www.nexusenergy.com.

About Puget Sound Energy

Puget Sound Energy is Washington state's largest energy utility, providing electric service to more than 1 million customers and natural gas service to 677,000 in 11 Washington counties. The utility's customer base is growing annually at about 2 percent for its electric service and 3 percent for its natural gas service.

As a regulated utility, Puget Sound Energy is following a strategy that emphasizes meeting the energy needs of its customer base through incremental, cost-effective energy conservation, low-cost procurement of energy resources, such as wind power, and prudent investment in energy-delivery infrastructure while consistently delivering high levels of customer service.

For more information, please visit www.pse.com.

Source: Business Wire

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