Billing alerts enhance customer experience

(Story by Rachel Hammer)

AEP and its operating companies continually strive to improve customers’ experiences with AEP and satisfaction with the service they receive. As part of that ongoing effort, the companies have expanded services that alert customers of important information about their accounts and services.

Beginning March 31, most of the companies have added Billing & Payment Alert services.

AEP’s Billing & Payment Alerts service sends enrolled customers an email or text message three days before payment is due. It also sends a message to confirm the company has received the payment. This week, AEP companies are introducing alerts for pending service disconnection due to nonpayment.

Enrolling is easy. Customers can enroll from the homepage of the local operating company website. They can select which alerts they want to receive. Customers also may receive alerts via text, email or both, depending on the preferences they indicate.

Alerts service is free to customers; however, message and data rates may apply.

“Proactively alerting customers to pending disconnection of service equals a win-win for AEP and our customers,” said Rob Cheripko, managing director – Customer Operations. “AEP will collect debts faster and avoid expensive truck rolls. The alerts will allow field personnel to work on other priorities while customers will be less likely to experience a loss in service due to nonpayment.”

AEP’s operating companies began offering Outage Alert services to customers March 3. This service notifies customers when power to their premise is interrupted and when it is restored. In between, it also provides updates on estimated restoration times. Already, more than 67,000 customers are enrolled for alert services.

Customer alerts about various account activities and situations is a service that customers desire and value. Leonard Lammlein, a customer service engineer principal located at AEP Ohio’s Fostoria Service Center said, “I have a couple of industrial customers that have been looking for some type of proactive outage alarm or alert for years. I now can steer them to subscribe to these alerts.”