SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) took top honors in August in Chartwell’s thirteenth annual Best Practices Awards, receiving one gold award and two silvers. The awards recognize excellence among energy companies for projects, programs and service initiatives that fall into the categories of Billing and Payment Programs, Communications, Customer Service, Outage Communications and Program Marketing.

“We’re committed to providing our customers with excellent service, and we’re always seeking new ways to streamline and improve their experience with us,” said Laurie Giammona, Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer at PG&E.

The honors PG&E received from Chartwell include awards in the Customer Service, Outage Communications, and Program Marketing categories:

• Gold Customer Service Award
  • PG&E remodeled the customer experience of its small and mid-size business customers and streamlined ways for this segment to connect with the energy company. PG&E was able to implement hundreds of new energy efficiency projects, so that customers could reap the benefits of having a sustainable business, reduced carbon footprint, and lower monthly electricity bills. As a result, 124,142,197 kilowatt hours were saved through energy efficiency projects. This is the equivalent of saving the State of California over 150,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions, powering over 15,000 homes or removing 30,000 vehicles from our roads for a year.
• Silver Outage Communications Award
  • PG&E used big data analytics to validate customer feedback and improve the outage notification experience. As a result, PG&E saw a 22% improvement in customers receiving outage notifications by July 2017 and the time it takes customers to receive notifications has been shortened by more than 20%, increasing the number of customers receiving notifications.
• Silver Program Marketing Award
  • PG&E used customer insights to determine an innovative way to expand the already successful Peak Day Pricing Enhanced Event Season Support by adding Enhanced SMS/Text Alerts. The campaign resulted in a growth rate of nearly 500% for businesses receiving text alerts about Peak Day Pricing Event Days.

PG&E will be recognized at the EMACS – The Customer Experience Conference in Phoenix this October.

About PG&E

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/ and www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/index.page.

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Source: Pacific Gas and Electric Company