CHICAGO, Sept. 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of its effort to improve customer service and satisfaction, ComEd today announced it is seeking feedback from customers on three possible residential bill designs to help determine what the final redesigned bill will look like. Customers can share feedback directly with ComEd through the utility's website.
To generate new and innovative bill designs, ComEd partnered with crowdSPRING, an online marketplace for creative services, in a global competition with a community of designers. The designers had to incorporate feedback from ComEd customers on bill improvements. More than 280 designs were submitted, and the top three were selected based on the features customers said they want most in their electric bills, such as including more usage information.
"ComEd is transforming its business to enhance our customers' experience and the bill makeover is part of this effort," said Val Jensen, senior vice president of Customer Operations, ComEd. "Our customers say our current bill can be difficult to read and understand, and we are changing that by developing a new bill designed by our customers. The redesigned statement will make it easier for our customers to understand and manage their monthly charges."
ComEd turned to its customers by posting polls and open-ended questions on its Facebook page to gather feedback. In addition, the utility used a technique called "crowdsourcing," which utilizes social media and other digital channels to gather feedback on bill design improvements.
Feedback reveals customers would like to receive a clearer, simpler bill. Customers said the bill summary and amount due were most important, followed by usage information and meter details. In addition, customers indicated they want to better understand supply charges versus delivery charges.
In addition to collecting feedback on the top three designs, ComEd will also gather customer suggestions through an online focus group. Then it will refine the mock-ups and produce the newly redesigned residential statement, which customers will begin to receive in 2014.
"ComEd is a forward-thinking company and partnering with them to crowdsource the design of their residential bill was a natural fit; we follow the industry pretty closely and are not aware of any other utility that has crowdsourced bill design," said Michael Samson and Ross Kimbarovsky, co-founders of crowdSPRING. "With hundreds of creative options and access to more than 140,000 designers globally, we are excited that ComEd awarded three designs they felt directly addressed their customers' requests and delivered on their goals."
To view and comment on the top three designs, customers can visit ComEd.com/TestKitchen.
Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC), the nation's leading competitive energy provider, with approximately 6.6 million customers. ComEd provides service to approximately 3.8 million customers across northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state's population.
SOURCE ComEd
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