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When Paducah Power System began using TextPower in December 2022, the benefits quickly became apparent and elevated their customer service in several meaningful ways.
Disconnect Notices
Paducah Power serves electricity to about 22,500 customers in Paducah and surrounding McCracken County. For decades PPS relied on customer service representatives to answer its phones. “We had been talking about going to an interactive voice response system (IVR), and during the COVID pandemic our phone volume increased exponentially, so we went to IVR and decided we wanted the ability to text,” said Eileen Miller, PPS Director of Business Systems.
For their IVR provider, Paducah Power chose Milsoft Utility Solutions, which partners with TextPower. The utility jumped on the idea of using TextPower’s feature to create text campaigns for customer service by sending disconnect warnings for non-payment.
When a customer fails to pay a bill, Paducah Power sends traditional notices and gives the customer ten days to pay before disconnection.
Using TextPower, PPS now additionally sends a text to customers on the ninth day, just prior to the disconnection date. “We just have had tremendous success with that,” Miller said. “Some days up to 60 percent of customers pay to avoid a disconnect. We had a lot of positive feedback from customers that appreciated the extra step. To me, that's great customer service.”
The text notices cut down on the truck rolls needed to disconnect a customer and free up those employees to address other issues.
And because the IVR system was tied in with TextPower, minimal notification was needed when Paducah Power switched over to IVR. No original text message was needed. For those customers who called in by phone regularly, customer representatives told them about the upcoming change to IVR, but otherwise the transition was gradual and “soft” Miller said. “It was very seamless.”
Customer Reach
Paducah Power uses TextPower to update customer phone numbers in its system. The utility wants to make sure it is reaching all its customers, especially when it has important messages to send. “The app makes it very easy to make sure those numbers are up to date,” Miller said. “Without that step, the texting program would not be as effective.”
As landlines fade away, Miller said texting is the way to go, and research supports her. Industry data shows that many people routinely ignore phones calls, especially from unknown numbers, but less than two percent of text messages are spam, so customers are less likely to ignore them, according to Mark Nielsen, Executive Chairman and co-founder of TextPower. “Ninety-eight percent of text messages are opened, and 95 percent are read within three minutes.”
Twenty percent of emails are opened or read, 10% of Facebook followers will see a single post, and only 4 percent of X followers will be engaged by a posting, Nielsen said.
New Business
TextPower is also demonstrating its value in Paducah Power System’s newest area of growth, broadband internet. The utility provides fiber optic broadband service to local businesses through vendors and directly to a few customers such as schools and hospitals.
In December 2022, PPS rolled out a pilot program to test the financial feasibility of expanding its fiber optic network to residential customers. In the first phase, PPS signed up about 45 residential fiber customers. A second phase, involving 500 customers, is ready to go, but has not yet launched.
The utility has already started using TextPower for its residential internet customers in the same way it did for electric consumers, giving customers behind in their payments a last chance to make a payment. So far, the utility has used that text function only once.
“It worked just the same as it did with our electric customers,” Miller said. “We sent it out and 100 percent paid the next day.”
Paducah Power is thinking about adding a URL to the non-payment texts. Clicking on the link would take the customer to the quick pay function on the utility’s website.
Informational texts sent to neighborhoods where internet is newly available generate sign-ups, often immediately after the text is sent.
Outage Management
Paducah Power had an outage management system before it had an IVR system, but when the utility switched to IVR it began using Milsoft’s OMS software “because it was easier to use” said Rick Windhorst, PPS’s Chief Operating Officer. The texting software was also easy to implement because integration with Milsoft is pre-built into TextPower’s software. Once the system is set up, the process for sending texts about an outage is almost automatic. Events in the OMS trigger an alert in the TextPower system. When alerts pop up in OMS, the system already has a template with language about an outage.
“We only have to add a few details, such as whether the outage was caused by a fallen tree or a vehicle accident,” Windhorst said. “So, within a few clicks, a few seconds, the dispatcher can add to the text, select the appropriate customers, and send the text out.”
Windhorst said their ability to send out a text during an outage lets the customer know PPS is aware of the outage and is working on it. He likes that level of customer service.
Prior to using TextPower, “it was a lot more difficult for us to try to reach out and get a hold of all those people, look up their numbers and call them on the phone” Windhorst said.
When customers receive texts, it cuts down on the volume of calls coming into the call center, lightening the burden on the utility’s customer representatives.
Windhorst has also found TextPower very useful for scheduled outages and routine maintenance, such as tree trimming.
“We send out a text to customers in the area where we’re going to be trimming trees, just to let everybody know we’re going to be there,” Windhorst said. In the past, a customer might have come home to find someone in their yard cutting their tree. “This provides a way of giving customers a heads up. If a customer has some concerns, they can call in response to the text before we get there.”
For more information about TextPower, visit the company’s website.
