RICHARDSON, TEXAS — June 9, 2015 — Vertex, a leader in utility customer experience solutions, today announced that SouthStar Energy Services (SSE) has selected VertexOne™ to enhance the experience of its retail customers, initially focusing on the company’s approximately half-million customers in the state of Georgia, where SSE operates under the name Georgia Natural Gas (GNG). VertexOne, a cloud-based platform that supports the unique needs of competitive retail energy suppliers and utilities will provide GNG’s new self-service portal, paperless billing and speech analytics capabilities.
After teaming up with Vertex for business process outsourcing, including call center management, SSE expressed the desire to improve its customers’ experience with next-generation capabilities and features.
“Customer satisfaction is a top priority,” said John Jamieson, senior vice president of SouthStar. “Vertex shares our customer commitment and understands our needs as a competitive retail gas provider. By investing in VertexOne, we’re investing in the present and future satisfaction of our customers.”
VertexOne will initially focus on upgrading GNG’s customer self-service portal with a streamlined user experience and equip call center agents with the tools to help even more customers take advantage of online services.
As a leading natural gas provider, SSE delivers approximately 6 million bills each year within the state of Georgia, its largest market. With VertexOne, SSE will be able to offer the convenience of paperless billing, saving money on postage and helping SSE and its customers to do their part for the environment.
VertexOne Speech Analytics features best-in-breed customer interaction and speech analytics software combined with Vertex’s industry experience and expertise. With it, SSE will be listening even more intently to the voice of the customers, gaining insight into emerging customer issues to increase first-call resolution.
“Since our relationship with SSE began, we are always looking for ways to bring modern enhancements to their customers quickly and affordably,” said Andrew Jornod, chief executive officer of Vertex. “Together, we look forward to building from the success of GNG’s contact center operations with VertexOne’s cloud-based customer experience platform, to further strengthen their position as the state’s leading provider of natural gas.”
As a cloud-based platform, VertexOne allows competitive retail suppliers and utilities to benefit faster from industry-leading customer experience solutions due to built-in standardized business processes and best practices. Now with VertexOne’s best-in-class delivery, uptime and technical support, all customer-facing utilities and competitive retail suppliers can deliver a consistent self-service and multichannel experience to their customers.
About Vertex
Dedicated solely to the retail energy and utilities industries, Vertex Business Services is a recognized leader in customer experience solutions serving more than 30 million customers for 55 electric, gas and water clients across North America. Vertex offers a wide range of innovative services and solutions — from consulting and analytics, to BPO and customer experience outsourcing—to help companies more efficiently deliver a compelling customer experience. Its VertexOne Software as a Service platform ensures that both competitive retail energy suppliers, as well as utilities, can benefit faster from an industry-leading, intuitive CIS solution. For more information, visit www.vertexone.net.
About SouthStar Energy Services
SouthStar Energy Services is a preeminent retail natural gas marketing company based in Atlanta and operating in 11 states. SouthStar is a joint venture between AGL Resources Inc. and Piedmont Natural Gas. SouthStar manages over ten brands across its footprint including Georgia Natural Gas in the state of Georgia, Nicor Advanced Energy and Nicor Solutions in Illinois, and in other states, Ohio Natural Gas, Florida Natural Gas, New York Natural Gas, Maryland Energy, and Grand Rapids Energy. SouthStar also does business in the Carolinas as Piedmont Energy Company and in other parts of the Southeast as SouthStar Energy Services. For more information: www.SouthStarEnergy.com.
