Voice-activated technology has made everything from setting timers to ordering a pizza as easy as putting the desired action into words. Recently, several natural gas utilities have spoken up to say, “Hey, Google: Why stop there?”
For example, PSE&G customers can use Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant to perform a variety of important tasks, including making payments, reporting outages, enrolling in automatic and paperless billing, and receiving safety tips.
“Our voice assistant options provide our customers with additional digital platforms in order to seamlessly interact with us and put control back into the customers’ hands through modern techniques,” Jared Osorio, manager, customer technology at PSE&G, told American Gas.
The PSE&G skill became available on Alexa in 2018. In 2019, CIO magazine recognized the utility’s use of the app by naming PSE&G to its CIO 100 List, which commends organizations that use leading-edge technologies to improve business procedures and customer relations. PSE&G added Google Assistant to its voice-activated customer service tools in late 2020.
Customer response for the voice assistant options has been positive. “Customers have identified making payments, keeping track of outages and ease of use as the top positive reasons for utilizing digital voice assistants,” Osorio said. “Moving into the future, getting real-time energy usage for various appliances is something that would push this platform to greater heights.”
Others gas utilities are also seeing the value in voiceactivated technology, with Southern California Gas Company, New Jersey Gas and Xcel Energy among those offering a similar menu of options. —Eric Johnson