CIS Re-development and Supplemental Call Center Services

A large investor-owned utility determined that for a number of years it had been overcharged for the coal it burned in its power plants.  Litigation ensued and was ultimately decided in favor of the utility.  The utility was directed by the state regulatory group to refund the overcharge money that it was awarded in the settlement.  The regulator’s order, while appearing simple on the surface, was quickly recognized to be quite complex as it was to include refunds to prior customers of the utility as far back as 10 years.  In other words, the utility had to be in a position to calculate the value of refunds owed to residential and commercial customers whose records were archived off-line, as well as those who still had active accounts.  While certain of the rebates could be applied directly to the accounts of customers by the utility’s customer information system, calculation of rebates to prior customers who no longer had active accounts could not be processed by the utility.  

The client engaged AEG to deliver a turnkey solution to the utility commission’s order, but required that the operation be ready to receive calls and calculate refunds in an extremely compressed timeframe in order to be in full compliance.  Overall, the utility required that:

• A call center be developed to handle toll-free calls from approximately 10 states in which an advertising campaign was to be launched to offer the refunds

• Securing and training a call center staff that would operate a clone of the company’s customer information system, as well as off-line microfiche – a slow and tedious method of data retrieval.

• AEG develop a relational database clone of the production legacy flat file CIS system; the software to identify callers’ accounts, calculate the customer’s total energy consumption, and the rebate and interest owed; and the system to print the checks and produce audit trails.

• Combine multiple accounts for the same customer so that only one check is produced per 4customer. 

• Operate the call center and all aspects of the rebate system for as many months as justified by call volumes.

AEG mobilized a two-pronged response to the problem.  To achieve this aggressive collection of goals, AEG put together a programming team that worked in close liaison with the utility’s IT, accounting and audit staffs and delivered a fully tested and operational system to the project effort in less than three months.  Simultaneously, a second team established a 30-member call center and handled all of the logistics.  The personnel were secured through a temporary employee agency and were trained by the project team. 

The call center operated for nine months.  During this period, it handled more than 60,000 calls from the utility’s customers.  The center and its staff helped the utility distribute more than $30 million in rebates and credits.  The entire project was delivered on time, thus meeting the regulator’s time schedule.  At the conclusion of the project, the system was turned over to the utility who handled the reduced call volumes for another year before eventually calling upon AEG once again to transition the system to the State for operation for eight additional years.