Connected with SDG&E’s Customer Contact Center

Inside San Diego Gas & Electric’s (SDG&E) headquarters in Kearny Mesa, dozens of highly-trained energy services specialists (ESS) speak with thousands of SDG&E customers every day. SDG&E’s customer service line receives around 3 million calls a year from customers wishing to extend the due date of their utility bill, make payment arrangements, schedule gas appliance adjustment orders, report outages, monitor their energy use or pay their bill on line.

What is it like to be the main point of contact between SDG&E and its customers? How has the Customer Contact Center (CCC) changed over the years? And what are some of the challenges and victories these specialists have each day?

According to CCC Manager Paul Rockwell, the Center is undergoing a major transformation.  As customer requests become more complex, energy service specialists need to understand rate options and customer offerings, such as ways and/or programs to save them energy – and they must help customers who have questions on topics such as electric vehicles, photovoltaic systems, smart meters and demand response programs.

“We’re trying to make it easier for customers to do business with us, on-line or using our automated voice-response system,” says Rockwell. “This lets our specialists focus on those customers with more complicated requests.”

The Customer Contact Center is divided into a range of functions:

• Forecasting – to ensure adequate staffing, service forecasting specialists predict the number of calls that will take place every 15 minutes of the day, 365 days a year. As an example, the Center gets more calls during bad weather – or at the start or end of the college year as students move.

• E-mail – the e-mail response team handles approximately 150,000 e-mails a year.

Did You Know? Customers can talk face-to-face, via Web cam, with CCC representatives at two customer contact kiosks – one in downtown San Diego and one in Oceanside.

• Phone – energy service specialists like Eduardo Cardenas respond to a range of residential and business customer calls. The position requires three months of training. “Our system routes calls to the available specialist who is most skilled at handling a particular type of customer request,” says Rockwell.  

• Analysis –the CCC Analyst Team works with other departments at SDG&E to make sure the CCC will be ready to respond when customers ask about new programs and services.

• Quality Assurance – this team monitors calls to ensure excellent service, while also identifying issues that present challenges to the specialists.

Did You Know? The CCC, through a language line service, has the ability to assist customers in 170 languages!

• Training – Keeping our ESS’s up to speed on the latest programs and tools is critical to providing superior customer service at all times. Our training team helps our ESS’s learn about comparison tools that will help analyze customers’ overall energy consumption, provide rate options and advice on shifting electric load to different time periods.  They are also trained to answer general solar questions and assist our Net Metering customers with specific billing questions as well as provide electric vehicle customers rate analysis and advice on appropriate rates that meet their needs.  

To keep up with the pace of change, innovation is key value at the CCC. The Center’s computer system used to require an extensive series of keystrokes to accomplish routine tasks. So a CCC efficiency team created a power pad which lets a specialist complete the same tasks with the click of one button. This tool improves consistency and saves time and money.

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