NYSEG and RG&E Improve Customer Experience with Suite of Online Offerings

AI energy assistant, new installation application, job status tool, and construction quote feature improve user experience for 1.9 million customers 


Improvements come as part of sweeping initiative to improve customer service


BINGHAMTON, NY — July 1, 2024 — New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG) and Rochester Gas and Electric (RG&E) have made comprehensive improvements to its online offerings for customers in the last year, and those new features are making a difference in the Companies’ service success. 


“We knew a large part of our post-pandemic service strategy would be to modernize how our customers work with us, and that optimizing our online tools would appeal to many,” said Samantha Subar, director of Customer Journey and Marketing. “What we’re pleased to see is the eager adoption of these new online tools and just how much they’re helping our customers.”


Ava, an AI energy assistant, is the newest feature to enhance the Companies’ websites. To start, Ava is focused on answering commonly asked questions about bill balance, bill delays, payment arrangement or budget billing, meter reading, understanding your bill, the service start or end process, power outage support, and MyAccount assistance. The goal is to provide customers with a simple customer-friendly avenue to receive quick answers to common questions. In just a few weeks, 3,238 customers have interacted with Ava to receive answers to their questions. 


The Companies’ online application for new installations has been redesigned to be more intuitive and robust. The new format not only reduces the time to process applications (now 1-2 business days vs. 5-7 pre-redesign), but customers and contractors can now upload and link documents so that they can reuse the details of their project. This year, 1,686 applications have been submitted through this time-saving feature. 


The online job status tool provides an automated job status update, and is easily accessed on any mobile, desktop, or tablet device. It instantly provides information that contractors previously needed to speak with a customer representative to obtain, like the status of tree trimming, inspections, scheduling, and installation status. This tool has seen consistent use since its debut, with 24,192 hits in 2024.


The Companies also debuted an online payment portal to help contractors and homeowners with construction or new connection pay quotations for service. This process has previously been completed by builders or homeowners sending a check to a manual processing vendor out of state, so the new functionality increased the speed of the process of obtaining quotes for new service considerably. Use of this tool has been robust, with 1,167 payments completed in 2024 alone. 


The Companies also now accept Google and Apple Pay for customer bills. These payment options are easy and convenient, and secured through Apple and Google’s encryption and class-leading security standards. This year, 15,421 transactions have been made via these secure, new payment options.


These improvements come as part of a sweeping initiative to improve customer service at the Companies, including hiring, rolling out smart meters to significantly reduce estimated billing, and holding in-person events across the state to meet customers one-on-one. The Companies are also achieving high satisfaction with customers who contact Customer Service and are consistently answering those calls within 30 seconds more than 80 percent of the time. More than 600,000 smart meters have been installed across the companies’ service areas so far.

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