CHICAGO, July 13, 2004 (PRNewswire-FirstCall) — Spanish-speaking residents of Northern Illinois will now find it easier to conduct business with ComEd. Responding to the needs of its diverse customer base, ComEd has just enhanced its telephone voice response system with new features that allow Spanish-speaking customers to conduct a number of account management and billing activities over the phone whenever it is convenient for them.
Through the automated, touch-tone system, Spanish-speaking customers can check their account balances, request account activity statements, request duplicate bills, report an outage and check status as service is restored, pay bills by phone using a major credit card, locate an authorized payment agent for paying bills in person, verify that a bill has been paid, create an arrangement for paying bills and sign up for budget billing.
“Our customers are important to ComEd, and we wanted to increase their ease of reaching us and their level of satisfaction in doing business with us,” said Phyllis Batson, ComEd’s call center director. “Now they’ll be able to complete these account management functions faster, without having to wait in the queue to talk with a Spanish-speaking customer care representative. Of course, Spanish-speaking reps and interpreters will continue to be available to all our customers if they choose.”
Currently, ComEd has more than 50 customer care representatives who are bilingual in Spanish and English.
“The customer care center is excited to expand self-serve capabilities to our Spanish-language customers,” Batson said. “These new billing features extend the touchtone options that have been in place for some time for English-speaking customers.”
Already, the new service is proving popular. In just the first full week of ComEd’s new Spanish billing options, more than 900 Spanish-speaking customers used the new automated phone features. Of those calls, more than 500 customers, or about 55 percent, completed their business within the automated system. The most popular feature is the ability to check account balances.
ComEd’s Spanish-language customers should listen for the “Para seguar en espanol” prompt to enter the voice response system.
Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation, one of the nation’s largest electric utilities with more than $15 billion in revenues and a customer base of five million. ComEd provides service to approximately 3.5 million customers across Northern Illinois, or 70 percent of the state’s population.
