Rochester Gas and Electric (RG&E) officials said on Monday that they’ve made significant improvements to their customer service operation, which they say is improving their billing situation.
That utility and co-owned New York State Electric and Gas, (NYSEG) are under scrutiny by the New York State Department of Public Service, which announced last month it has expanded its investigation into complaints about the utilities’ billing systems.
Patricia Nilsen is president and CEO of the two utilities, and she said that one of the main problems has been staffing, especially with higher turnover rates during the pandemic.
She said that the company hired more than 120 new customers service employees last year and will hire more than 130 this year.
Nilsen said one challenge is that the more complex billing problems require more experienced customer service people.
“So that's why we're really looking at hiring those representatives, getting them the training they need to be effective,” said Nilsen. “And unfortunately it means asking for our customers to give us as much patience as they can. And know that we're doing everything we can to try to make it so that we're answering their questions faster.”
RG&E said that with staffing now stabilizing, they expect the billing issues to decrease. Nilsen said the company already made some progress before the holidays, and it expects to see continued improvement over time.
One longer term solution is the installation of ‘smart meters’ which directly report information back to the utility and which Nilsen said are beginning to be installed in Rochester this year. But that will be about a three to five year process.
Nilsen also said that the utility is making progress in reducing the backlog of new construction and upgrade jobs, which she said “had different starts and stops over the pandemic.” But she said the wait times for that utility construction have been reduced from as much as a four to five month wait to now something that’s under four weeks. Nilsen said RG&E is working with the Rochester Home Builders’ Association to improve the process.
Meanwhile, the state will host a series of public forums starting this month to hear from consumers about their concerns. The dates and times of those forums have not been released yet.
