© 2014 Portland General Electric. All rights reserved.

Meeting Consumer Expectations

One Payment at a Time

October 21st 2014

Rick VanBeek

Kaitlin Pomeroy

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PGE is a regulated investor-owned utility engaged in the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity.

Oregon’s Largest Utility Headquartered in Portland

2,596 employees

833,000 customers

43% of Oregonians depend on PGE for electricity

Our Company

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Revenue Collections Org Structure

Rick VanBeekSupervisor

Cyndie GomezSupervisor

Eric HougerSupervisor

Community Offices

Electronic Bills & Payments

Cash Remittance

Print & Mail Services

6 Offices24 FTE

3 FTE 7 FTE 13 FTE

Terry DavisManager

4

Payment Options

WebChecking (One-time or Recurring)

Credit/Debit

Community OfficeCashCheck

Credit/DebitGift Card

Cash RemittanceCheck

Gift Card

Western UnionCash

Debit Card

VCOM / SoftgateCash

IVRCheck (One-time)

Credit/Debit

ConsolidatorsRPPS

Checkfree

TextWeb Enrolled Checking

5

Transactions by Channel

30.94%

5.58%

63.48%

Mail RemittanceWalk-In OfficesElectronic/ 3rd Party

6

Transactions by Channel

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 20130.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

MailWalk-InElectronic

7

Revenue by Channel

47.65%

6.21%

46.14%Mail RemittanceWalk-In OfficesElectronic/ 3rd Party

8

Revenue by Channel

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 20130.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

80.00%

90.00%

MailWalk-InElectronic

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Cash Remittance

o Lockbox Change

Community Offices

o Advanced Functionality ATM Pilot

Electronic Bills & Payments

o Absorbed Fee Bank Card

Payment Initiatives

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Cash Remittance

Lockbox Change

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Equipment

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SUPERVISOR LEAD/SYSTEM ADMIN

PRODUCTION PRODUCTIONKEYING

NON LIGHT &POWER

EXCEPTION POSTING /

KEYING

Staffing

13

Primary Driver: Image Cash Letter

Secondary DriversBill Pay/Exception ChecksCheck and List

Case for Change?

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RFP Process

Site Visits

Employee Engagement

Requirements Gathering

Core Payment Processing

Aperta was a Partner

What Went Well

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Our account number was inconsistent

Coordination with IT (work changed teams)

Developer onsite for installation was not the developer who

customized our application from requirements

Single sourced with understanding of the system

Knowledge shift from experienced team members to team

members more comfortable with technology

Challenges

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Drove Company Decision Not to Outsource

Saved over 100K in annual costs

Lower cost service agreement

Eliminated Bank Courier

Reduced an FTE Immediately

Plans for an additional FTE reduction

Approx: 40% of Exception Payments are now Automated

Results

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Community Offices

Advanced Functionality ATMs

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Primary Driver: ATM for Customer Convenience

Case for Change?

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CardTronics willingness to conduct a year long pilot

ATMs did not require much of an effort for PGE

Established relationship with Softgate

The ability for customers to pay by Visa

An ATM to withdraw cash to make cash payments

Ability to pay other bills at our walk-in location

What Went Well

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Averaging only 400 Payments a month at two locations

Customers are frustrated with how many steps are required

to make a payment

Customers have not adopted the ability to pay other vendors

at the volumes we expected

Higher levels of down time in one location

Employees felt they were being replaced and didn’t promote

the functionality

Results

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Decided to end the pilot in February 2015

What we would have needed to move forward?- More user friendly user experience with not so many steps

required to pay their PGE bill- Make PGE the landing page- Payment posting in real-time- Automatically cancel disconnects/send for reconnect- Let the customer make the choice on the receipt method;

print, email, text, etc.- Show account balance after payment made or on receipt

Moving Forward

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Electronic Bills & Payments

Absorbed Fee Bank Card

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Primary Drivers:#1 Request from Customer Feedback

TriggeroPeer/Neighbor Utility Got Approved in Rates

Case for Change?

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Can we predict our

Adoption Rate?

Challenge

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Feb: Submitted Rate

Case

Apr-May:

Numerous Data Requests

June:

Settled for 500K with a go-live

date of July 1st

2013 Process

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Feb: Submitted Rate Case

Apr-May: Numerous Data

Requests

June:Made decision

to split Residential

and Commercial

Customers and change go-live to November

Sep 30th: Went live with the absorbed

fee model

2014 Process

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The Customer Experience

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30

31

32

33

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Results

35

Have a multi-year card strategy

Ensure you have organization commitment

Partnering our card program with another initiative

would have been helpful

Lessons Learned

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Thank You