Press Releases

Apogee follows the acquisitions of energyOrbit and AIQUEOUS with experienced executive leadership hires

Atlanta, GA Apogee Interactive, Inc., a leading provider of digital engagement communication strategies for utilities, announced today the strategic hire of Jon Ezrine as Chief Executive Officer and Mitch Bradley as Chief Revenue Officer. These moves further strengthen the company’s position after the recent investment by M33 Growth and acquisitions of energyOrbit, the market-leading solution for cloud energy efficiency and Demand-Side Management operations, and AIQUEOUS, a provider of customer and program management software to utilities and utility service providers.

Jon Ezrine has over 34 years of executive experience in the software industry. He most recently served as CEO of Castellan Solutions, a SaaS provider of business continuity and crisis management software solutions. Jon has expertise leading rapidly growing SaaS software businesses backed by both venture capital and private equity sponsors. As a seasoned software/technology executive, he has successfully guided companies through mergers and acquisitions by focusing on seamless integration and maximizing value for stakeholders, customers, and employees.

Mitch brings over 20 years of experience working with utility and local government focused software companies. He most recently served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Cartegraph. As Apogee’s CRO, he will focus on accelerating the combined company’s revenue retention and growth while refining the company’s infrastructure and processes, resulting in an improved experience for new and existing customers.

“I am looking forward to working with Mitch and all of the employees at Apogee, energyOrbit and AIQUEOUS as we bring these three companies together,” said Ezrine. “It is an exciting time to be bringing cutting-edge customer engagement capabilities to leading utilities as they transform themselves with energy-saving and energy-efficient programs. Our combined platform will be game-changing for utilities driving customer program adoption and satisfaction.”

About Apogee Interactive, Inc.
Apogee Interactive, Inc. (apogee.net) is a leading provider of digital engagement communication strategies for utilities. Combined with AIQUEOUS (aiqueous.com) and energyOrbit (energy-orbit.com), their solutions help utilities and service providers increase staff productivity, meet customer-facing program goals more efficiently and quickly, and improve overall customer satisfaction. Apogee provides an integrated, end-to-end customer relationship and engagement software platform that delivers an exceptional personalized digital customer experience and enables easy and efficient program design, execution, management, and reporting.

New triumvirate to align best-of-breed platforms to light new development pathways for utilities

PETALUMA, Calif., July 25, 2023 — energyOrbit, provider of a leading cloud solution for DSM management, tracking, reporting, and participant engagement, has joined forces with Apogee Interactive – a provider of customer engagement, education, and communication software – and AIQUEOUS – a provider of customer relationship and program management software – as a premier customer relationship and engagement platform for utilities and utility service providers. The combined entity is backed by M33 Growth, a growth stage investment firm that partners with founders and management teams seeking a partner to help them breakthrough as market leaders.

For more than 14 years, energyOrbit has empowered demand-side management (“DSM”) managers to more quickly set up, modify, and execute energy efficiency, demand response and water conservation programs. In consideration of emerging zero-emission targets to mitigate climate change concerns worldwide, energyOrbit has collaborated with utilities to envision and explore new avenues beyond energy efficiency and electrification. These include helping reduce carbon emissions and encourage electric vehicle market support, as well as solar, wind, and other clean energy developments.

“We are excited to welcome the energyOrbit team to the Apogee and AIQUEOUS family,” says Jim Malcom, Chief Operating Officer for Apogee. “With the addition of energyOrbit, the combined entity is able to provide more robust solutions to the utility vertical and provide an integrated, end-to-end offering for utility programs while also supporting customer engagement throughout the program lifecycle.”

“Utilities face evolving challenges across the energy transition, including decarbonization, drought and resilience, among others. This new alliance between energyOrbit, Apogee Interactive, and AIQUEOUS will enhance our ability to provide a single yet robust solution to our customers that aims to address these challenges, built on our collective domain expertise and experience,” said Udi Merhav, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, energyOrbit.

“Shifting from Customer Information Systems to Customer Relationship Management systems is critical to help utilities engage their customers’ attention beyond the monthly bill,” said Jonathan Kleinman, CEO of AIQUEOUS. “Combining energyOrbit and AIQUEOUS gives us an opportunity to learn from our experiences and create a product roadmap that delivers on not just what our clients need now, but also where utilities, retailers, CCAs and suppliers need to go for their customers. I am excited to start building with the energyOrbit team.”

“We are thrilled to join forces with energyOrbit to reshape how utilities today manage and execute on their customer-facing programs,” said Brian Shortsleeve, Co-Founder and Managing Director of M33 Growth. “We believe the combination of Apogee, AIQUEOUS and energyOrbit raises the bar for what it means to be a provider of end-to-end customer experience software purpose-built for utilities.”

“With the support of M33 Growth, we can better help utilities and related sectors advance and manage their offerings through programs, such as those supported by the Inflation Reduction Act,” said Merhav. Malcom added, “M33 Growth continues to demonstrate their commitment to building best-in-class software businesses.”

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

About energyOrbit
Founded in 2009 and based in Petaluma, Calif., energyOrbit is the market-leading solution for cloud energy efficiency and Demand-Side Management operations. energyOrbit is deployed with leading utilities, program administrators, and third-party implementers across North America, enabling customers to realize an average of up to 75 percent improved efficiency and savings in their DSM operations. energyOrbit empowers utilities to deploy DSM programs in hours, scale programs and portfolios efficiently, and to streamline utility customer relationships, partners, and internal communications seamlessly. For details, visit www.energy-orbit.com and follow on Twitter (@energyOrbit) and on LinkedIn.

About Apogee

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a provider of customer engagement software for utilities, serving the energy industry since 1993. Apogee’s customer engagement platform helps utilities establish ongoing digital relationships with customers, helping them engage and educate customers, reduce costs, achieve behavioral energy efficiency, and grow customer satisfaction. Apogee’s solution enables personalized, relevant, video-based messaging through multiple channels, drives self-service, and improves operational efficiencies through marketing automation. Apogee’s loyal client base includes Commonwealth Edison, Liberty Utilities, ConEd, Duquesne, Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, LADWP, and hundreds of other IOU, municipal, cooperative, and gas utilities. For more information, visit apogee.net.

About AIQUEOUS

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, AIQUEOUS provides customer relationship and program management software to utilities and utility service providers. AIQUEOUS’s clients use POWERPATH, WaterWays and ECOiQ in 8 states and 2 Canadian provinces, and completed over 47,800 projects in 2022 providing nearly $60 million in incentives or rebates to their customers. AIQUEOUS products aim to increase customer satisfaction, provide visibility and transparency across services and programs and improve staff productivity and system security. AIQUEOUS is SOC 2 compliant and meets security requirements for investor-owned and publicly-owned utilities. Learn more at www.aiqueous.com.

About M33 Growth

M33 Growth is a venture and growth-stage investment firm that partners with founders and CEOs who have bootstrapped their companies to strong growth and are positioned to rapidly scale their companies and breakthrough as market leaders. With industry experience fueling sales and marketing engines, driving acquisitions, and building value through data assets, M33 Growth seeks to propel portfolio companies to succeed in their markets. Founded by veterans of investment firms with considerable operational experience, the Boston-based firm seeks to invest in companies in the software, healthcare, and services sectors throughout North America. Learn more at www.m33growth.com.

Media Contacts:

Cathy Morley Foster
energyOrbit
925-708-7893

cmorleyfoster@energy-orbit.com

Karen Morris
678-684-6801

kmorris@apogee.net

Tucker, Georgia and Austin, Texas

Apogee Interactive – a provider of customer engagement, education, and communication software – and AIQUEOUS – a provider of customer relationship and program management software – have combined to create a premier customer relationship & engagement platform for utilities and utility service providers. The unified entity is backed by M33 Growth, a growth-stage investment firm that partners with founders and management teams who have bootstrapped their businesses to a point where they are aiming to breakthrough as market leaders.

Apogee has been empowering utilities with customer engagement solutions for two decades. “In founding and building Apogee, my husband Joel and I stayed intently focused on our strengths and passion for excellence,” said Susan Gilbert, Co-Founder of Apogee. “We only worked in areas where we believed we could be the best in the world at leveraging technology, analytics and innovation to promote energy stewardship to benefit the energy industry,” added Joel Gilbert, Co-Founder. “We are excited to see the company enter this new phase of growth, partnered with a team who shares our perspective and values.” Susan and Joel Gilbert will continue to support the business in an advisory capacity.

The transaction brings together a wealth of experience in the utility sector and provides a single-source vendor for outbound engagement and program execution & management. “Today, utilities are competing for their customers’ attention beyond the monthly bill,” said Jonathan Kleinman, CEO of AIQUEOUS. “Partnering with their customers to decarbonize, improve demand flexibility and meet efficiency goals requires customer awareness and a seamless digital path to participation. The combination of Apogee and AIQUEOUS potentially enables any energy or water service provider – including utilities, retailers, CCAs and suppliers – to deliver an exceptional customer engagement experience throughout the entire lifecycle.”

“At Apogee, we are always looking for ways to message utility customers in more relevant and personal ways,” said Jim Albert, Chief Technology Officer at Apogee. “Combining the Apogee and AIQUEOUS solutions allows us to better understand what critical factors drive program participation, and in the end will allow our customers to implement programs with engaged and satisfied customers.”

“We are excited to partner with M33 Growth and their commitment to the goal of building best-in-class software businesses,” said Jim Malcom, Chief Operating Officer of Apogee. “We are eager to share best practices with others in the M33 portfolio and leverage the team’s experience in the energy industry.”

“We believe that M33 is the perfect fit for AIQUEOUS as an equity partner,” said Kleinman. “By recognizing the value of our team, understanding the systems and support for our business stage, and experience scaling SaaS businesses, we believe that M33 provides the resources needed to achieve our mission and vision.”

“We are excited to partner with the Apogee and AIQUEOUS teams to redefine how today’s utilities engage with and educate their customers,” said Brian Shortsleeve, Co-Founder and Managing Director of M33 Growth. “We look forward to helping the team drive this next phase of growth in creating what we believe to be a cutting-edge customer engagement and relationship management software platform, purpose-built for utilities.”

About Apogee

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a provider of customer engagement software for utilities, serving the energy industry since 1993. Apogee’s customer engagement platform helps utilities establish ongoing digital relationships with customers, helping them engage and educate customers, reduce costs, achieve behavioral energy efficiency, and grow customer satisfaction. Apogee’s solution enables personalized, relevant, video-based messaging through multiple channels, drives self-service, and improves operational efficiencies through marketing automation. Apogee’s loyal client base includes Commonwealth Edison, Liberty Utilities, ConEd, Duquesne, Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, LADWP, and hundreds of other IOU, municipal, cooperative, and gas utilities.

For more information, visit apogee.net.

About AIQUEOUS

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, AIQUEOUS provides customer relationship and program management software to utilities and utility service providers. AIQUEOUS’s clients use POWERPATH, WaterWays and ECOiQ in 8 states and 2 Canadian provinces, and completed over 47,800 projects in 2022 providing nearly $60 million in incentives or rebates to their customers. AIQUEOUS products aim to increase customer satisfaction, provide visibility and transparency across services and programs and improve staff productivity and system security. AIQUEOUS is SOC 2 compliant and meets security requirements for investor-owned and publicly-owned utilities.

Learn more at www.aiqueous.com.

About M33 Growth

M33 Growth is a venture and growth-stage investment firm that partners with founders and CEOs who have bootstrapped their companies to strong growth and are positioned to rapidly scale their companies and breakthrough as market leaders. With industry experience fueling sales and marketing engines, driving acquisitions, and building value through data assets, M33 Growth seeks to propel portfolio companies to succeed in their markets. Founded by veterans of investment firms with considerable operational experience, the Boston-based firm seeks to invest in companies in the software, healthcare, and services sectors throughout North America.

Learn more at www.m33growth.com.

Apogee proudly sponsors AESP’s inaugural event bringing together energy and transportation professionals for a smooth EV transition.

Apogee Interactive, Inc., a leading provider of digital engagement communication strategies for utilities, announced today its endorsement as a founding sponsor of the Association of Energy Service Professional’s (AESP) Electric Vehicle Driver Experience (EVDX) Conference in Detroit on June 5^th– 6^th. This inaugural event will provide a forum for utilities, solution providers, and government officials to discuss the electric vehicle market and its impact on consumers and the energy sector. This exclusive event will set the stage for an open exchange and solutions lab for energy professionals dedicated to ushering in a new era of transportation.

AESP, a non-profit organization of nearly 5,000 active energy professionals is dedicated to developing and delivering efficiency, clean energy, and demand flexibility solutions. The mission of the EVDX event is to ensure that customers and businesses experience a smooth transition as the electric vehicle market expands.

At the event Apogee will be discussing its digital electric vehicle customer journey communication platform designed to help utilities engage and communicate this sometimes-complicated topic with customers. Apogee’s solution allows utilities to segment and target their messaging by using conditional response video surveys to gauge consumers’ purchase intent of an electric vehicle — in the near future or not at all. In addition, once the customer’s intent is established, the platform helps them make informed buying decisions, enroll in relevant programs, and engages them throughout vehicle ownership.

Jim Malcom, COO Apogee Interactive, stated, “Apogee sees this conference as pivotal in laying the foundation of cooperation between utility companies, government, and solutions providers. Our utility partners see success using our strategy to educate consumers regarding the cost of electric vehicle ownership, EV rate options, the advantages of off-peak charging, and mileage and kWh range by model.” He continued, “Apogee knows utilities need to position themselves as a reliable source of information. We are encouraging them to take advantage of relevant and personalized digital communications to open a dialogue that creates trust while building the future of beneficial electrification.”

About Apogee

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a leading provider of customer engagement services for utilities, serving the energy industry since 1993. Apogee’s customer engagement platform helps utilities establish ongoing digital relationships with customers, helping them engage and educate customers, reduce costs, achieve behavioral energy efficiency, and grow customer satisfaction. Apogee’s solution enables personalized, relevant, video-based messaging through multiple channels, drives self-service, and improves operational efficiencies through marketing automation. Apogee’s loyal client base includes Commonwealth Edison, Liberty Utilities, ConEd, Duquesne, Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, LADWP, and hundreds of other IOU, municipal, cooperative, and gas utilities. For more information, visit apogee.net or LinkedIn.

Contact: Karen Morris kmorris@apogee.net   678-684-6801

Prestigious award, full-scale deployments, and new engagement platform functionality highlight 2022

Apogee Interactive, Inc., a leading provider of customer engagement and energy analysis software for utilities, announced today record performance and results for their utility clients in 2022.

Major highlights include:

• A prestigious utility industry award.
• Multiple utility pilot deployments with some of the largest IOUs in the country went full scale.
• New functionality for Apogee’s customer engagement platform.

Prestigious utility award for Personalized Video Reliability Reports

The year brought recognition from Chartwell’s well-respected EMACS awards, with Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) winning the 2022 Best Practices Gold Communications Award for their use of Apogee’s Personalized Video Messaging. This marked the utility industry’s first use of Personalized Video Messaging to communicate residential reliability. The Personalized Video Reliability Reports showed each customer their electric reliability compared to the previous year. Results showed that more than half of customers had a more favorable impression of ComEd after watching the video.

Forward-looking utilities adopting and expanding the use of Apogee’s digital engagement platform

Apogee’s clients include many of the nation’s largest, most innovative, and forward-looking utilities across Investor-Owned Utilities, Municipal, and Cooperative industry segments. In 2022, utilities started pilots, upgraded subscriptions to include personalized video messaging, or decided to deploy full-scale solutions, resulting in millions of additional utility customers receiving relevant messaging as utilities see the value of proactive and personalized communications.    

Recent case studies have proven that utilities partnering with Apogee in 2022 reaped the benefits of using the robust digital communications platform that provides year-round support and includes customized marketing strategies that meet and exceed their goals.

Using Apogee’s proprietary engagement and communication platform, utilities are achieving increased customer awareness, driving higher program participation, reducing high bill calls, and producing higher customer satisfaction.

During 2022, utilities using the platform have seen extraordinary results:

• 20+ million personalized messages sent
• 37 million utility programs promoted
• 10% increase in program participation
• Click-through rates averaging more than 15%
• 93%+ utility customers reported they did not need to contact the call center after receiving Apogee’s personalized video bill explanation
• Apogee’s Energy Advisor application identified $319 million in energy savings and over 1.7 million metric tons of carbon reduction.

New platform capabilities for expanded customer engagement

Apogee continued its successful decades-long communications platform expansion, including tools that educate customers on essential topics, including rate and payment options, reliability, electric vehicles, renewables, and energy efficiency programs. New functionality rolled out to existing Apogee clients in late 2022 includes Energy Monitor and an advanced EV Rate Calculator.

Jim Malcom, COO of Apogee Interactive, stated, “Apogee is pleased with the results our utility clients have seen in 2022 and are looking forward to expanding several large pilots to full scale in 2023. Our robust digital platform, customized strategy, and ongoing support has proven to be an asset for our utility clients.”

About Apogee

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a leading provider of customer engagement services for utilities, serving the energy industry since 1993. Apogee’s customer engagement platform helps utilities establish ongoing digital relationships with customers, helping them engage and educate customers, reduce costs, achieve behavioral energy efficiency, and grow customer satisfaction. Apogee’s solution enables personalized, relevant, video-based messaging through multiple channels, drives self-service, and improves operational efficiencies through marketing automation. Apogee’s loyal client base includes Commonwealth Edison, Liberty Utilities, ConEd, Duquesne, Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, LADWP, and hundreds of other IOU, municipal, cooperative, and gas utilities. For more information, visit apogee.net or LinkedIn.

Contact: Karen Morris kmorris@apogee.net   678-684-6801

Chartwell Recognizes ComEd as Utility Industry Leader with 2022 Best Practices Gold Communications Award

Apogee Interactive, the creator of the Envoy communications platform and personalized video bill explanations for utilities, proudly congratulates Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) as the recipient of Chartwell’s 2022 Best Practices Gold Communications Award. ComEd will receive the prestigious award for its Personalized Reliability Reports (PRR) video developed by Apogee to educate customers about their outages. The 2022 Chartwell Best Practices Awards recognize excellence among electric and gas utilities with respect to projects, programs and service initiatives aimed at improving the customer experience, communications, and awareness.

ComEd’s Wendy Hines, Senior Business Project Manager, and project champion will present the case study at the 25^th annual EMACS – The Customer Experience Conference in Orlando on October 19^th. The conference, hosted by Chartwell, will draw more than 300 attendees from 65 utilities across the US.

ComEd, an electric service provider to more than 4 million customers in northern Illinois, recently spent $2.6 billion to upgrade its electric grid. However, even though reliability had improved more than 60% since 2012, surveys continued to indicate that most customers were unaware of the impact the upgrades had on the reliability of their electric service. As a result, ComEd partnered with Apogee Interactive to create Personalized Reliability Report (PRR) videos to help improve customers’ perception and overall customer satisfaction.

March through mid-April of 2022, ComEd emailed 2,113,393 PRR videos to residential customers. The video shows the customer their actual reliability for 2021 versus 2020, mentions their March bill will include a detailed personal reliability report, invites them to download the ComEd app, and then asks them to take a survey about the video.

ComEd’s personalized video reliability reports achieved a 45.14% unique open rate and 3.63% unique clickthroughs, a significant improvement over ComEd’s internal benchmarks. Most importantly, the survey responses reveal increased understanding and a more favorable impression of ComEd:

• Over 91% liked the video – a lot (52%) or a little (38.73%)
• Over 83% found the videos valuable – very (36.33%) or moderately (47.68%)
• Nearly 98% thought the videos were easy to understand – very easy (70.79%) or easy (27.58%)
• Nearly 52% felt more favorable toward ComEd after watching the video

Susan Gilbert, Apogee Co-Founder and CEO emphasized, “We are excited to see ComEd receive this well-deserved recognition as a leader in the energy industry and proud that Apogee had the opportunity to work with a forward-thinking utility. Personal and relevant information provided promptly improves customer engagement and increases satisfaction.”

In addition to taking top honors in the communications category, ComEd also placed at the bronze level in the areas of customer service and digital experience.

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a leading provider of customer engagement services for utilities, serving the energy industry since 1993. Apogee’s customer engagement platform helps utilities establish ongoing digital relationships with customers, helping them engage and educate customers, reduce costs, achieve behavioral energy efficiency, and grow customer satisfaction. Apogee’s solution enables personalized, relevant, video-based messaging through multiple channels, drives self-service, and improves operational efficiencies through marketing automation. Apogee’s loyal client base includes Southern Company, Liberty Utilities, Duquesne Light, Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, Exelon, NextEra, LADWP, and hundreds of other IOU, municipal, cooperative, and gas utilities. For more information, visit apogee.net.

Customers and Utilities Benefit from Turnkey Rebate Fulfillment Strategy

Apogee Interactive, Inc., a leader in digital engagement and customer communications strategy, announces utilities using their outbound communications platform Envoy will have access to a robust utility branded marketplace. The product dashboard now included in the end-to-end solution allows utilities to provide customers with a streamlined, personalized journey that guides them through onboarding, energy education, program participation, and an online shopping experience.

Apogee’s marketplace is a quick and easy online store that helps utilities fulfill their energy efficiency goals and meet rebate incentives in a seamless customer experience.

The marketplace allows utilities to:

• Build Customer Relationships
• Meet Energy Efficiency Goals
• Offer and Track Rebates

“Apogee added the marketplace to our platform of customer engagement tools to allow utilities to offer customers a seamless experience,” said Jim Albert, Chief Technology Officer at Apogee. He continued, “Apogee’s marketplace helps utilities convert recommendations to taking action leading to fulfillment in their rebate programs.”

The marketplace is positioned for success as the Envoy outbound communications drive traffic to the store as a call to action. Links to the online storefront may appear in the Home Energy Advisor savings recommendations, at the end of a personalized video message, energy alerts, and other personalized messaging sent through the outbound messaging system.

Customers can come full circle from learning about the impacts of weather and behavior on their bill to taking steps to increase their home’s efficiency in a single step while energy is on their mind creating a win-win for utilities and customers.

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a leading provider of customer engagement services for utilities, serving the energy industry since 1993. Apogee’s customer engagement platform helps utilities establish ongoing digital relationships with customers, helping them engage and educate customers, reduce costs, achieve behavioral energy efficiency, and grow customer satisfaction. Apogee’s solution enables personalized, relevant, video-based messaging through multiple channels, drives self-service, and improves operational efficiencies through marketing automation. Apogee’s loyal client base includes Southern Company, Liberty Utilities, Duquesne Light, Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, Exelon, NextEra, LADWP, and hundreds of other IOU, municipal, cooperative, and gas utilities. For more information visit, apogee.net.

Utilities are Adjusting Strategies to Include Digital Communications Platform

Atlanta GA,  April 13, 2022 – Apogee Interactive, an award-winning provider of customer engagement and energy analysis software for utilities, announced today the release of a new white paper, “The Customer in an Era of Digital Transformation.” The study developed by Apogee and Zpryme, an energy industry research firm, will be highlighted at the ETS22 Conference in Austin, Texas.

Based on a survey conducted by Zpryme of more than 100 utilities, research confirms that improving customer satisfaction through digital means is crucial to a successful customer satisfaction strategy.

Utility responses revealed:

• 98% want to improve proactive customer communications and digital outreach.
• 97% recognize that customer satisfaction is important to their organization.
• 63% have invested or plan to invest in a digital communications platform.

Jim Malcom, Apogee Chief Operating Officer shared, “Digital engagement provides utilities cost-effectively solutions to share information with customers in a two-way dialogue about their energy use, which increases awareness and trust in the utility brand. Our research concluded 97% of utilities find customer satisfaction of key importance to their organization.”

He added, “Clients using our personalized digital strategy have established a good rapport with their customers and are finding it easier to engage them on critical topics like rates, reliability, demand response and electric vehicles.”

Utilities using Apogee’s proactive and personalized digital communications are experiencing substantial rewards in higher customer satisfaction scores.  Typically, more than 50% of customers receiving these messages report their perception of the utility has improved. Additionally, studies have documented a 10% increase in program participation and a 15% reduction in high bill calls.

Engaging today’s customers in the age of digital transformation requires strategic adjustments. The white paper confirms that utilities are embracing cost-effective and innovative approaches to improve the customer experience and are gaining benefits beyond the traditional utility customer relationship dynamic. To learn more about “The Customer in an Era of Digital Transformation,” for a copy of the full  white paper contact info@apogee.net.

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a leading provider of customer engagement services for utilities, serving the energy industry since 1993. Apogee’s customer engagement platform helps utilities establish ongoing digital relationships with customers, helping them engage and educate customers, reduce costs, achieve behavioral energy efficiency, and grow customer satisfaction. Apogee’s solution enables personalized, relevant, video-based messaging through multiple channels, drives self-service, and improves operational efficiencies through marketing automation. Apogee’s loyal client base includes Southern Company, Liberty Utilities, Duquesne, Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, Exelon, NextEra, LADWP, and hundreds of other IOU, municipal, cooperative, and gas utilities. For more information visit, apogee.net or LinkedIn.

Utilities Benefit Using Apogee’s Communication Platforms

Apogee Interactive, Inc.,  a leading provider of customer engagement and energy analysis software for utilities, announced today record-breaking 2021 performance delivering unmatched results for utility clients.  The year brought recognition from prestigious Frost & Sullivan with their 2021 Technology Innovation Leadership Award and acknowledgment by prominent consultancy, Guidehouse, of the firm’s aggressive progression up their Insights Home Energy Management Leaderboard.

Apogee’s clients include some of the nation’s largest and most innovative, forward-looking utilities across Investor-Owned Utilities, Municipal, and Cooperative industry segments.  Of those, Public Utilities Fortnightly awarded their 2021 Top Innovator Award to Apogee’s client Jones Onslow EMC for their success engaging customers with proactive, personalized Member On-boarding videos.

In 2021, Apogee added a record number of new utility clients including several of the nation’s largest Investor-Owned Utilities and many Cooperatives and Municipals that combined serve over 7 million U.S. customers. Customer retention maintained at 94% with many clients upgrading their subscriptions to include personalized, video messaging.

According to a new client, Mark Lambert, Unitil’s Vice President of Customer Operations, “Our vision for a smarter energy future starts with the customer experience.  Apogee’s calculation platform will provide ideal support for our rate-based initiatives, and we look forward to working with Apogee in 2022 and beyond as we strive to give customers the tools they need to better manage energy costs.”

Apogee’s unique communications platform connects utilities with their customers by providing relevant, personalized messaging throughout the customer’s lifecycle. Using Apogee’s proprietary engagement and communication platform, utilities are achieving increased customer awareness, higher program participation, reduced high bill calls, and higher customer satisfaction. During 2021, utilities using the platform have seen extraordinary results:

• 20+ million personalized messages sent
• 10% increase in program participation
• Click-through rates averaging more than 15%
• Utility customers rated Apogee’s personalized video messaging 8.5 out of 10
• Apogee’s Energy Advisor application identified $293 million of energy savings and over 1.7 million metric tons of carbon reduction.

Apogee’s utility clients provided an unprecedented Net Promoter Score of 55, an increase of six points over the previous year and 21 points above the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry average. Apogee continues its successful decades-long expansion of its communications platform including tools that educate customers on vital topics such as rate options, electric vehicles, renewables, and energy efficiency programs.

About Apogee

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a leading provider of customer engagement services for utilities, serving the energy industry since 1993. Apogee’s customer engagement platform helps utilities establish ongoing digital relationships with customers, helping them engage and educate customers, reduce costs, achieve behavioral energy efficiency, and grow customer satisfaction. Apogee’s solution enables personalized, relevant video-based messaging through multiple channels, drives self-service, and improves operational efficiencies through marketing automation. Apogee’s loyal client base includes Southern Company, Liberty Utilities, Duquesne, Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, LADWP, and hundreds of other IOU, municipal, cooperative, and gas utilities. For more information visit, apogee.net or LinkedIn.

Public Utilities Fortnightly Recognizes Excellence in Customer Engagement

Apogee Interactive, Inc. a leading provider of digital engagement platforms for utilities, announced today that Jones Onslow EMC’s Vice President of Corporate Communication and Business Strategy, Steven Goodson, has been recognized by Public Utilities Fortnightly as a 2021 Top Innovator in the category of customer engagement. Public Utilities Fortnightly has provided its readers with commentary and analysis of key industry trends for 93 years. Energy industry executives continue to rely on the publication today when making important business decisions.

The prestigious award highlights an onboarding pilot featuring Apogee’s New Member Welcome Messaging Series that makes a powerful first impression using personalized videos to communicate with new customers. This messaging is the first step in establishing a cost-effective, ongoing, digital relationship with members.

The automated Welcome Series involves three messages.  Each message includes a video with information relevant to the customer and a call to action likely to interest them. Subsequent messages keep the utility and its offerings visible to customers, helps match customers with beneficial programs, and helps achieve the utility’s corporate goals.

The personalized videos include:

• Introduction of the company with links to convenient payment options,
• Explanation of the bill with links to enroll in paperless bill payment,
• Information about programs and rebates relevant to that customer with links to sign up.

The six-month pilot not only produced measurable increases in program participation by more than ten percent. The pilot also automated processes that increased operational efficiency and freed up staff.

Steve Mitnick, Executive Editor, Public Utilities Fortnightly, observed, “Steve Goodson, Vice President of Corporate Communication and Business Strategy at Jacksonville, North Carolina based Jones Onslow Electric Membership Corporation, was one of the “Inspiring Individual and Teams of Innovators” in this year’s Public Utilities Fortnightly Top Innovators.  What was most impressive to us was the over ten percent increase in a program’s participation by customers after a six-month pilot of Apogee’s Welcome Series solution.”

Steve Goodson, JOEMC’s Vice President of Corporate Communications and Business Strategy, added, “Apogee’s automated solution is straightforward and easy.  It freed up our staff to focus on other projects. In addition, we were impressed by the level of personalization within the videos that provided extraordinary value to our members without putting demands on internal resources.”

Apogee continues to pioneer digital engagement solutions that produce measurable results and benefit both the utility and their customers.

About Apogee

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a leading provider of customer engagement services for utilities, serving the energy industry since 1993. Apogee’s customer engagement platform helps utilities establish ongoing digital relationships with customers, helping them inform customers, reduce costs, achieve behavioral energy efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction. Apogee’s solution enables personalized and relevant messaging through multiple channels, encourages self-service, and improves operational efficiencies through automation. Apogee’s loyal client base includes ConEd, Southern Company, NextEra Energy, Duquesne, Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, LADWP, and hundreds of other IOU, municipal, cooperative, and gas utilities.  For more information visit, apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Redefining Digital Customer Engagement

Apogee Interactive, Inc., a privately-held, Atlanta-based, leading provider of proactive customer engagement software for utilities, announced today that Frost and Sullivan has recognized the firm with the 2021 North American Technology Innovation Leadership Award for the North American Market. The prestigious award recognizes companies that shape the future of technology and its uses. Frost and Sullivan measures success by the degree to which a technology is leveraged and the successful introduction of high-tech solutions to answer customers’ most pressing needs, altering the industry or business landscape in the process.

Apogee’s energy analytics platform enriches electric utilities’ customer service capability by combining personal energy-use data with relevant, timely, actionable energy information. The solution automates communications and encourages self-service, thereby increasing utility operational efficiency and dramatically improving customer satisfaction scores. In addition, utilities are successfully educating customers, helping them increase self-service, reduce high bill calls, and build program participation.

This has been a year of distinguished recognition for the firm. In April, Guidehouse Insights’ Leaderboard on Home Energy Management (HEM) ranked Apogee among the top three performers in a field of fifteen.  The report ranked Apogee highest among its peers in Technology, Production Strategy, Product Quality & Reliability, and Go-To-Market Strategy for their personalized, video-based customer engagement platform.  Then in August, Hometown Connections, the public power industry’s partner for vetting best-in-class vendors, honored Apogee as their Partner of the Year.

According to Susan Gilbert, Apogee’s CEO and co-founder, “We are proud to be recognized this year for our analytical excellence and cutting-edge innovation by so many industry leaders.” She adds, “Our key distinctive is the accuracy of our sophisticated mathematical algorithms that disaggregate customer’s bills then create personalized videos that not only educate, but also impress customers.”

The Frost and Sullivan report, 2021 Technology Innovation Leadership, further explains, “The ability to provide a comprehensive energy engagement solution that includes bill change explanations and predictions including renewable energy considerations gives Apogee a compelling advantage over its competitors.”  The award, based on a 10-point methodology, shows Apogee outperforming its competitors with an overall score of 9.25.

To read the complete Frost and Sullivan report and learn how Apogee is shaping the future of energy analysis and utility customer engagement you can review the report here.

About Apogee

Apogee Interactive is a leading provider of customer engagement services for utilities, serving the energy industry since 1993. Apogee’s customer engagement platform helps utilities engage and inform customers, reduce costs, achieve behavioral energy efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction. Apogee’s solution enables personalized and relevant messaging through multiple channels, encourages self-service, and improves operational efficiencies through automation. Apogee’s loyal client base includes ConEd, Southern Company, NextEra Energy, American Electric Power, Tampa Electric, People’s Gas, CenterPoint, Xcel Energy, LADWP, and hundreds of other IOU, municipal, cooperative, and gas utilities.  For more information visit, apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Winning Onboarding Strategies Pay Dividends to Utilities

Apogee Interactive announced today that their utility clients see a 10% increase in program participation using Apogee’s ENVOY™ Customer Engagement Platform to send Personalized Video Messaging welcoming new customers.  Welcome messages are customers’ first exposure to ongoing video messaging dialogue from the Automated Marketing System intelligently targeting the right message at the right time to a customer.

In a recent pilot with Jones Onslow EMC, the new member onboarding strategy included a series of intelligently targeted and delivered emails containing personalized messages correlating with the beginning of the customer’s service. Each message contained a relevant call to action dramatically increasing the likelihood the customer will review and participate in programs.

The strategy includes three welcome emails with personalized videos:

1. Introduction of the utility with links to available payment options,
2. Explanation of the bill with links to online bill payment, and
3. Information about programs and rebates matched to the customer’s profile and energy use, including sign-up links.

Nils Frenkel, Apogee’s VP of Sales, explained, “The first encounter a customer has with a brand is the most critical point in the customer journey. It sets the tone for the relationship going forward.” He continued, “Utilities using the onboarding strategy engage their customers at a deeper level which leads to more beneficial interactions moving forward.”

Analysis also indicates that utilities using the platform are finding an increase in customer satisfaction, improved operational efficiency, and as much as a 15% reduction in high bill calls.  Using the Apogee ENVOY solution frees employees to focus on other important functions. Surveys of customers receiving the video communications report that 95% would like to continue to receive the personalized messaging.

Steve Goodson, JOEMC’s Vice President of Corporate Communications and Business Strategy, further mentioned two key takeaways “First, Apogee’s automated solution for sending welcome emails to our members was straightforward and easy. It also freed up our staff to focus on other projects. Secondly, we were excited about the use of professional videos in every email, even more so about the level of personalization within the videos that provided extraordinary value to our members without putting demands on internal resources.”

To learn more about the Jones Onslow EMC Welcome Series pilot, watch our 30-minute overview: Click here to learn more.

The latest Guidehouse Insights Leaderboard on Home Energy Management (HEM) ranks privately held, Atlanta-based, Apogee Interactive among the top four performers in a field of fifteen.  While the field of players has gotten a lot more crowded during the last two years, Apogee leaped ahead of power industry behemoths and outranked eleven other providers.

Most notably, the company achieved the highest ratings in the critical categories of Go-To-Market Strategy, Technology, Production Strategy, and Product Quality & Reliability for their artificial intelligence (AI) powered, personalized, customer engagement platform.

The study is based on primary research gained from phone and in-person interviews with industry leaders including executives, engineers, and marketing professionals from every part of the value chain, including technology companies, utilities and other service providers, industry associations, government agencies, and the investment community. It shows dramatic growth in the HEM marketplace since 2018 in terms of players and market size.

Apogee is singled out for providing utilities with software delivering personalized, proactive, digital communications to customers using AI and predictive analytics to make messages timely and relevant.  The messages help customers manage their home’s energy use and support our transition to a greener energy future.

In addition to reports and notifications, Apogee uses personalized videos that explain energy bills, request DR-event participation, and provide high and mid-cycle bill alerts. These videos are interactive, allowing consumers to select viewing options during the video that are relevant to their interests. The company has also developed an Amazon Alexa skill that explains a customer’s energy bill and provides savings tips.

The report calls Apogee’s market position enviable, saying in the report, “As long as Apogee maintains the quality and scope of its offerings, where it scored exceptionally well, it should be well-positioned to maintain its position or even move up on the Leaderboard in the future.”  The company currently serves some of the industry’s largest and most progressive top-tier IOUs along with hundreds of smaller cooperatives and municipals through aggregated purchase by G&Ts and Joint Action Agencies.

The key to Apogee’s success is the creative use of the industry’s most accurate and refined predictive energy modeling engines using AI-powered disaggregation algorithms that power an entire suite of applications and services.  What began as the highly rated “virtual” energy audit has now morphed into outbound Personalized Video Messages and sophisticated tools that help customers understand their energy use, ways to save, and how to optimize their home’s performance.

According to Apogee CEO, Susan Gilbert, “We are pleased to have sped through the contender category to border the Leader quadrant in just two years. I am especially proud of being ranked higher than all the providers in Go to Market Strategy and being among the top performers in four other critical areas of performance. Only our geographic focus on the North American market held us back, but we see the international market as an opportunity for future growth.”

Technology was another evaluation criteria where Apogee was distinguished, receiving the highest rankings for their “development and technology providing a significant business advantage over competitors that is likely to have an enduring impact on its success. Higher scores are given for a proven market success or for delivering unique product attributes.”

Click Here to access Guidehouse Insight’s Leaderboard report overview.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is a leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. Serving the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform is used by hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including top-tier investor owned utilities, municipals, and cooperatives. Apogee’s clients include Consolidated Edison, Southern Company, Tampa Electric, NextEra, CenterPoint, Xcel, Columbia Gas, Exelon, DTE, LADWP and Jackson EMC. For more information visit, apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Adding Experienced Leader Strengthens Executive Team

Atlanta, GA, Jan. 28, 2021 – Apogee Interactive Inc., a leading provider of customer engagement software to hundreds of North American energy utilities, has named Nils Frenkel as Vice President of Sales. In this position, Nils will lead the company’s new business and client success teams, responsible for continuing the surge of momentum created by Apogee’s timely positioning at the utility-customer interface.

“A respected leader and skilled strategist, Nils brings a deep understanding of our utility clients’ needs,” shared Apogee CEO Susan Gilbert. “His consulting background combined with our powerful customer engagement platform are a perfect match at this exciting time in our company’s expansion.”

Mr. Frenkel comes to Apogee from Navigant (now Guidehouse), a global provider of consulting services, bringing over 15 years of experience in business development leadership across multiple industries. While at Guidehouse, Frenkel was a Director in the Energy Practice working with utilities on their DER, Energy Efficiency, Sustainability, and Digital strategies. Prior to working with Guidehouse, he held leadership roles at Frost & Sullivan and PeopleXS in North America, Europe, and Asia. He has a BA in business administration from the University of Lincoln, U.K., and a graduate degree from the International Business School in Bad Nauheim, Germany.

“With the increasing need of utilities to effectively engage with their customers, it’s great to see that hundreds of loyal utility clients already benefit from Apogee’s solution,” Nils stated. “After meeting the talented team and seeing Apogee’s ability to deliver new amazing new capabilities, this is the right career move for me at the right time.”

Advancing Apogee’s mission of helping utilities leverage cutting-edge technologies for engaging and influencing customers, Nils leads the well-established team of professionals dedicated to delivering extraordinary value to utilities and the customers they serve.  Nils joins Apogee’s seasoned executive team including Jim Malcom, Chief Operating Officer, and Jim Albert, Chief Technology Officer.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is a leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. Serving the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform is used by hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Consolidated Edison, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit, apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, 678-684-6801 or kmorris@apogee.net.

Utilities and Customers Reap the Rewards of Personal and Relevant Communications

Apogee Interactive, a leading provider of proactive customer engagement solutions for energy utilities, announced today its 2020 results. Building on the success of 2019, Apogee continued its growth momentum and adoption of personalized messaging and now provides its messaging platform to over two dozen utilities. Apogee provided millions of personalized videos reducing call volume while increasing program participation helping customers pay their bills. Messages included links to rebates, connections to payment assistance programs, new rate plans, and other services. Results were immediate, measurable, and remarkable.

Success metrics from these personalized, proactive, customer engagement messages included:

• Unique click-through rates 15 times the industry standard,
• 97% of recipients report the video message was useful,
• 99% of customers receiving the videos request continuation of the service,
• 58% reported that their perception of the utility had improved, and
• Net Promoter Scores computed from survey results topped 78 compared to typical scores for utilities in the single digits.

In addition to the surge in personalized video messaging, Apogee experienced an uplift in use of its online energy tools. Customers, energy auditors, and call center representatives leaned more heavily than ever on Apogee’s Energy Advisor online assessment tool that performs an engineering analysis of the home and makes dollarized savings recommendations with links to relevant rebates and programs.

One client summed it up, “Right now, the online energy assessment is the best option we have for helping customers understand energy use in their homes and for connecting them with applicable assistance automatically and cost-effectively.”

Apogee CEO, Susan Gilbert, explains, “The pandemic amplified the need for customer engagement and communications and in 2020 we were fortunate to have the right tools at the right time to deliver extraordinary services for our clients.”

Xcel Energy successfully sent millions of video messages in 2020. Customers receiving the information awarded the utility with a Net Promotor Score of 36 in April 2020.

Overall, utilities found proactive messaging during the pandemic has been well received by utility customers, with 89% of those surveyed reporting they avoided a call about their bill due to the message.

During 2020, Apogee cemented its position as the thought leader in the energy engagement software market.  Apogee Institute webinars attracted over 1,600 registrants and included guest speakers from leading organizations such as J.D. Power and Fiserv and addressed the pressing issues as lowering costs to serve customers, driving utility program participation and compelling higher customer satisfaction.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. Serving the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform is used by hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Consolidated Edison, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit, apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, 678-684-6801 or kmorris@apogee.net.

                Apogee’s Clients Reward Exceptional Service with High NPS

For Immediate Release:

Atlanta, GA, November 18, 2020, Apogee Interactive, Inc., a leading provider of customer engagement software for the energy industry, announced today their utility customers awarded the Software as a Service (SaaS) company with a Net Promoter Score of 49. This score reflects 15 points higher than the industry average of 34 in the category of software and application companies and an improvement of 13 points from last year’s score. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a widely used customer loyalty and advocacy metric that measures customers’ willingness to recommend a company and return for another purchase. Therefore, NPS correlates with the quality of the company’s customer relationships, the superiority of its service, and its customers’ willingness to promote the firm to others and expand their services.

Net Promoter Scores are based on responses to a single standardized question: How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague? NPS can be as low as −100 (all detractors) or as high as +100 (all promoters). Compared to software companies reporting NPS, Apogee’s score of 49 is “excellent.” This score reflects the company’s continued dedication and investment in their customers’ satisfaction. NPS score of 49 shows a strong presence of customer goodwill and providing utilities with cutting-edge customer engagement tools.

Susan Gilbert, Apogee’s CEO, and co-founder, reports, “Outstanding service and cutting-edge innovation are the hallmarks of Apogee’s corporate culture and are integral to our business strategy. As a team, we pride ourselves on knowing we are delivering world-class energy analysis and extraordinarily effective customer engagement software that “future-proofs” our clients’ decisions to engage our services.”

Over the firm’s 27 years serving the energy industry, Apogee’s growth has been fueled by achieving a 98% customer retention rate, growing existing accounts, and by adding new major clients each year.  Apogee has proudly established itself as the unparalleled best choice for utilities seeking a turn-key solution for customer engagement, driving customer satisfaction, educating customers, and influencing their behavior.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. Serving the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform is used by hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Consolidated Edison, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit, apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, 678-684-6801 or kmorris@apogee.net

Apogee delivers value-driven by customer preferences and market trends

Atlanta GA, Apogee Interactive announced today the release of its 2020 Feature Pack with significant advancements in its engagement platform and online tools. These improvements will result in increased customer satisfaction and help drive program participation. The new features will also pave the way for utilities to take advantage of marketing automation and more targeted communication with end-users.

According to Susan Gilbert, Apogee CEO, “Apogee is known in the energy industry for cutting-edge innovation based on the industry’s most accurate energy modeling and for perfecting best practices in customer engagement.  We do that by listening to our hundreds of utility clients directly and their millions of customers through online feedback.  Every year, we add valuable features and capabilities to enhance our platforms.  This 2020 release exceeds expectations by adding a comprehensive library of personalized videos, smart speaker notifications, and enhanced virtual energy audits to engage and delight customers.  Apogee’s analysis is conservative, honest, and the most accurate energy disaggregation available. The hallmark of our industry reputation, our energy-savings predictive models are unmatched. As our clients say, ‘It Just Works!’”

The 2020 feature pack for Enterprise customers includes a more intuitive design, with drill-down menus allowing users to navigate easily to what interests them the most.  Energy Savings Tips have been updated to the most recent industry standards and can be linked to a corresponding utility rebate or program for improved participation.

Enhancements to Envoy, Apogee’s proactive messaging platform, include the Targeted Video Bill, a condensed version of the standard video bill with a configurable ending that can promote utility programs, explain rate options, and more. Utilities using Envoy will now have access to an extensive library of these endings, along with the option for A/B testing to help gauge the effectiveness of email templates, subject lines, images, and types of videos. The Feature Pack introduces an enhanced version of Special Purpose Calculators, allowing end-users to make more informed decisions regarding the cost of ownership and maintenance of an HVAC system and new or used electric vehicles.

Finally, the millions of households Apogee serves through hundreds of utility clients can now receive notifications through Alexa with the new Energy Advisor skill. This skill can easily be enabled and linked to a customer’s account so they can receive the same information in the video bill analysis, mid-cycle alerts, and seasonal communications through their smart speaker.

Apogee’s 2020 Feature Pack is available to existing customers beginning in Q4 2020.  This is just one of the ways the company “future-proofs” their clients by staying ahead of their needs and pushing on the envelope of what is possible in cost-effective, high impact, customer engagement.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. Serving the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform is used by hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Consolidated Edison, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, 678-684-6801 or kmorris@apogee.net

Xcel Energy Recognized as an Industry Leader in Customer Engagement

Atlanta GA, Today, Apogee Interactive, Inc., one of the nation’s leading providers of proactive customer engagement solutions for the energy industry, announced Xcel Energy (XEL), a client since 2017, was selected as a finalist for Chartwell’s People’s Choice Awards in the category of Best Video. Chartwell’s People’s Choice Video Award recognizes outstanding, and creative achievement in short video marketing/communications efforts.

The Xcel Energy personalized videos have been distributed across their eight-state service territory to millions of customers whose bill increased by more than $15 from the previous month. Each video used the customer’s billing history and current consumption to compute and show the factors causing the bill to change due to weather, days-of-service, rate change, and behavior in the home and monetized the impact of each factor.  Videos ended with a COVID-19 response offering assistance and links to payment options and other services. Survey results from the videos show a boost in Xcel’s Net Promoter Score of 7 points, now totaling 36 points, well above the industry standard of 15. The personalized messaging showing concern for customers during the pandemic produced extraordinary engagement results with open rates of 58 percent, click-through rates of 14 percent, and 87 percent of participants rated the content very or somewhat useful.

The program is ongoing with the goal of educating and engaging electric, gas, and dual-fuel, residential customers with relevant and personal messaging.  View the Xcel video here.

Apogee’s CEO, Susan Gilbert said, “Xcel Energy is known for its innovation and dedication to providing their customers with excellent service and proactive communications. Everyone at Apogee is proud to be a partner in their success.” She added, “Apogee understands that building customer trust and improving brand perception requires educating customers, showing they care, and putting them in control of their energy use.”

Utilities working with Apogee are focused on cultivating deeper levels of customer engagement leading to the best possible customer experience.

About Apogee:

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a privately held, woman-owned business and one of the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement SaaS provider for energy utilities. As the Hometown Connections partner for customer engagement, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, targeted, relevant, and personalized communication for hundreds of North American utilities, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, ConEd, LADWP, and Jackson EMC. For more information, visit apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

                Apogee Shares How Municipal Utilities are Maximizing the Benefits of Customer Satisfaction

For Immediate Release:

Atlanta, GA Sept. 15, 2020 Apogee Interactive’s Chief Financial Officer, Jim Malcom, was joined today by  Ellen Richardson, formerly of ElectriCities of GA, presenting at the American Public Power Association’s  2020 Business and Financial Virtual Conference.  This educational forum is designed to address the needs of public power professionals in the fields of finance, customer accounting, and pricing. More than 350 people attended the first ever virtual delivery of the annual event.

Malcom’s presentation “Customer Satisfaction Pays” emphasized the need for utilities to establish continued digital engagement with their customers throughout the year, not only during times of outage or crisis. He shared his observation that customer satisfaction can be both an offensive and defensive strategy. Offensively, happy customers are more likely to participate in programs, buy more services, are happier with the utility and are more cost-efficient to serve. From a defensive perspective, satisfied customers are less likely to adopt disruptive technologies like rooftop solar vs. community solar projects.

According to Malcom, “Apogee conducted an analysis to examine how J.D. Power Customer Satisfaction Scores and Operating Margins relate. The analysis determined that, with a 95% degree of confidence, there is a statistically significant positive correlation between the two. In other words, as customer satisfaction increases, so does operating margin.”

A major midwestern investor owned utility deployed Apogee’s outbound communication suite of applications known as “Envoy” or Personalized Video Messaging. The utility surveyed customers to assess how Apogee’s proactive video messaging affected their customers’ perception of the utility. Early survey results from a general population of customers produced a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 18.  With subsequent messaging, this score increased to 32.  Interestingly, the NPS among low-income customers was much higher at 39.  We have seen NPSs at some utilities achieve the 60s.  All these numbers are well above the industry’s average NPS of 15.

Malcom added, “Utilities that focus on improving customer satisfaction are seeing higher scores, better financial performance, more favorable legislative outcomes, and improved revenue growth.”  Adding, “There is a clear message here.  Investing in customer experience brings significant rewards like reducing costs from calls to the call center, increasing program participation, and reducing tension with intervenors.  Apogee helps utilities achieve these results cost-effectively.”

About Apogee:

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a privately held, woman-owned business and one of the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement SaaS provider for energy utilities. As the Hometown Connections partner for customer engagement, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, targeted, relevant, and personalized communication for hundreds of North American utilities, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, ConEd, LADWP, and Jackson EMC. For more information, visit apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Contact: Karen Morris info@apogee.net

Personalized Messaging Extends Goodwill and Improves Operational Costs

For Immediate Release

Atlanta, GA Sept. 3, 2020, Apogee Interactive, Inc. announced today that Sydney G. Roberts, Ph.D., Technology Director, Apogee Interactive has provided a Bonus Pack Session to the Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) 1^st Virtual Conference, Fueling the Energy to Change. AESP is a community of energy professionals dedicated to advancing the industry through professional development, networking invested in supporting a sustainable energy future. AESP will share the session with more than 350 Conference attendees, as well as AESP members through the association’s resource library.

Dr. Roberts’ presentation titled “Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Business Analytics, Neural Nets… Really?” explains in simple terms how AI technology developed specifically for energy companies can be used to improve decision making by both utilities and their customers. She uses real-world examples to demonstrate that rich and valuable insights can be computed from utility bill, meter and weather data, and, importantly, how to translate these insights into engaging communication with customers that brings beneficial results to utilities without draining already stressed human resources.

Roberts explained, “Artificial intelligence helps energy providers with automated decision making, they can use data analysis that includes utility bills and weather data to send personalized and proactive messaging to customers. She continued, “This pre-emptively helps avoid high bill complaints, predicts seasonal energy costs, sends energy-saving reminders, and alerts to hot weather events that helps customers that may be struggling to pay bills.”

Energy companies using these technologies have proven a reduction in high bill calls by 15%, and many have used automated outbound messaging to curb energy use and reduce operating costs during peak demand events. As an added benefit, the system can find targets for heat pump upgrades or encourage upgrades to a new gas furnace.

Apogee Interactive is dedicated to helping utilities usher in positive change in the energy industry by providing accurate and innovative customer engagement software to hundreds of utilities across the US. Apogee’s outbound communications platform has successfully educated millions of energy customers and it has proven to help utilities reduce costs and improve brand perception.

About Apogee:

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a privately held, woman-owned business and one of the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement SaaS services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, targeted, relevant, and personalized communication for hundreds of North American utilities, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, ConEd, LADWP, and Jackson EMC. For more information, visit apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Personalized Video Messaging and Virtual Audits Boost Engagement Scores

Apogee Interactive announced today that Jackson EMC, a 230,000 member cooperative headquartered in Jefferson Georgia, is the recipient of Apogee’s 2020 Customer Excellence award. The award recognizes outstanding performance among hundreds of Apogee’s utility clients for exceptional customer service and ongoing member engagement using Apogee’s Personalized Video Bill Explanations and Virtual Energy Assessments.

Upon receiving and watching the videos, members are asked to complete a short survey. The results have been stunning: more than 90% of Jackson EMC’s members found them easy to understand, and 95% found the information useful.  More compelling were the verbatims comments.  One member commented, “I like that you send these videos to help us understand what lowers or increases the bill so we can try and work on that area to improve energy costs. Thank you.”  Another wrote, “This video presentation is VERY EFFECTIVE. Please continue to provide this critical information about my usage, affecting factors, and how to reduce costs. Extremely Pleased!”

The award also acknowledges the vital role of Jackson EMC’s marketing team. The team led by Lee Chapman, VP of Marking and Member Services, with Christy Queen, Director of Residential Marketing, and Tiffeny Tolder, Senior Member Engagement Specialist, earned the recognition for their outstanding work in driving awareness and execution of the platform.

Jackson EMC’s CEO, Chip Jackins, said, “Apogee continues to innovate, and our engagement scores continue to rise even in these uncertain times during COVID-19.” He continued, “The Virtual Energy Assessment and the Personalized Video Messaging allows us to reach our members safely and efficiently through their outbound messaging platform.”

Apogee CEO, Susan Gilbert, adds, “We are proud to have served Jackson EMC as a trusted business partner for more than 20 years.  It’s rewarding to see the innovation we provide utilities across the US enabled here benefiting our fellow Georgians.  We pride ourselves on “future-proofing” decisions to use our customer engagement platform because we will continue pushing the envelope of what can be done cost-effectively with high impact.”

Making Apogee’s services more accessible and affordable for the Georgia Co-ops, Oglethorpe Power Corporation’s has a master agreement with the firm providing significant savings and enhanced services for participants.  Information about that program is available upon request.

About Jackson EMC:

Jackson Electric Membership Corporation, the largest electric cooperative in Georgia and one of the largest in the nation, is headquartered 50 miles northeast of Atlanta in Jefferson, Ga. The cooperative serves more than 236,000 meters on 14,000 miles of energized wire. For more information, visit jacksonemc.com.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a privately held, woman-owned business and one of the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement SaaS services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, targeted, relevant, and personalized communication for hundreds of North American utilities, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, ConEd, LADWP, and Jackson EMC. For more information, visit apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Contact: Karen Morris 678-684-6801 – info@apogee.net

Building Goodwill with Customers Pays Dividends

Utilities using Apogee’s ENVOY proactive messaging platform are seeing extraordinary results. The platform’s communication channels include personalized video bill explanations, text, and email messages that inform customers of payment options, financial assistance programs, low and no-cost ways to save, and rate options. What makes the messaging captivating is each message is composed using the customer’s billing history and AMI data, making it personal and relevant to each household. During the COVID-19 crisis, this communications strategy shows customers the utility cares, is helping them reduce energy costs, and identifies ways to manage their financial burden.

Apogee uses its sophisticated energy modeling capabilities to craft individual messages that resonate with each recipient.  Sending millions of personalized messages over the past five years has produced a robust dataset of remarkable customer reactions:

• 97% of customers rate the information as highly or somewhat Useful.
• Click-thru rates have been 20 times higher than the industry standard,
• Net Promoter Scores have jumped to 39 from the utility industry average of 15.

Utilities using proactive messaging are reaping numerous rewards during this crisis.  One major Midwest IOU using this digital strategy documented a 15 percent reduction in calls to the call center.

Apogee’s Engagement Manager, Elizabeth Burroughs, shared, “Apogee takes a proactive approach to communications, and we recognize that this will be a long-term effort.” She continued, “We provide utilities a four to six-month communication plan around COVID-19 messaging configured to the utility’s needs.”

Apogee’s clients started implementing their COVID-19 messaging in April and, since then, have noticed exceptional results. One utility has seen an increase of over 40% in click-through rates in just a few months. We also included a standardized Net Promoter Score question that measures customer loyalty in a survey at the end of the video tailored to COVID-19; the score increased by 7 points, which was an increase of 23%. This data proves that this is content customers want to see.

A recent survey by Apogee revealed that the biggest challenge faced by utilities is communicating with customers, followed by the need to assist customers financially. It is crucial to start planning how you will communicate with customers going forward. With a digital communications strategy in place, regardless of the message, utilities have an advantage and the ability to address concerns quickly.

During these challenging times, utilities are using this unique opportunity to foster goodwill with customers, while building stronger relationships by providing relevant, useful, and consistent information through cost-effective digital channels. Their investments in helping customers now will pay off as we take the first steps on the road to recovery.

Apogee Institute recently gave a compelling presentation on COVID-19. You can view the presentation “How COVID-19 is Impacting the Utility Industry.” in its entirety here.

Members Prefer SMS Messaging

For Immediate Release:

April 1, 2020, Atlanta, GA — Apogee Interactive, Inc. announced today the striking success client Horry Electric Cooperative has achieved engaging their members with Short Message Service (SMS) or text messaging.  Located on the South Carolina coast, and serving 85,543 members, Horry EMC is among the State’s fastest-growing residential communities.  With a goal of engaging members in an ongoing dialogue about their energy use, and using a previously untapped communication channel, Horry chose Apogee Interactive’s Engagement Platform for Information and Communication (EPIC) to text message its members with personalized, relevant, time-sensitive messages.

Beginning in July 2019 with 7,000 (11 percent) of Horry’s member’s mobile numbers, Apogee began sending short, meaningful texts to members with specific calls-to-action including enrolling in rebate programs, seeing payment and rate options, reminding of beat-the-peak events, and sharing seasonal money-saving tips. Sending at a rate of 2 messages per month, more than 83,000 text messages were received by members producing a remarkable 97 percent positive feedback on the question, “do you feel this is an effective communication method?”  And 95 percent of recipients requested continued to receive the messages Requests to be added to the program have brought the number of members receiving the text messages to 10,000 and is steadily rising.

According to Horry Electric’s Manager of Public Relations, Marketing and Energy Management, Penelope Hinson, “We are impressed that our members responded to this outreach with such profusely positive ratings and comments, like:

• “I loved the program! Getting text messages about peak times keeps me mindful about saving energy and I saved money at the same time! Thank you!
• “I think it’s a great program! If it ain’t broke, don’t change it!”
• “Very useful. Tips you wouldn’t think of or know on your own. Thanks for the help.”

She added, “Each message contains a call-to-action designed to further engage and inform members about our services.  An unanticipated result was use of our online energy calculators skyrocketed, an eight-fold increase over use the previous year.”

EPIC can also target certain groups of customers such as low income or customers who would specifically benefit from opting into a different rate option.

Apogee’s Chief Operations Officer, Jim Malcom, reports, “We are finding text messaging to be extraordinarily effective and universally well-received by customers.  This ability to cost-effectively deliver customized messages to the target audience most likely to be receptive to the offer is changing the way utilities think about ongoing digital customer engagement.”  Malcom continued, “We are seeing utilities that communicate with customers regularly with relevant messaging see higher customer satisfaction rankings and lower the cost to serve.”

Horry Electric is a Touchstone Energy® Cooperative.  Touchstone Energy® Cooperatives is a national network of electric cooperatives across 46 states that provides resources and leverages partnerships to help member cooperatives and their employees better engage and serve their members. By working together, Touchstone Energy cooperatives stand as a source of power and information to their 30 million member-owners every day.

 About Horry Electric Cooperative, Inc. Horry Electric was organized on April 24, 1940, with 627 charter members today the cooperative serves 85,543 members. As a not for profit, member-owned corporation, since 1941, Horry Electric is dedicated to providing information and energy-related services on a fair and equitable basis.

About Apogee Interactive, Inc. Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a privately held, woman-owned business and one of the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement SaaS services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, targeted, relevant, and personalized communication for hundreds of North American utilities, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, ConEd, LADWP, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Utilities and Customers Reap the Rewards of Personal and Relevant Communications

Atlanta, Jan 21, 2020  Apogee Interactive, one of the nation’s leading providers of proactive customer engagement solutions for utilities, announced today that 2019 was a monumental year for the software development firm and their utility clients.

Highlights of the year included, Xcel Energy being recognized by the Association of Energy Service Professional (AESP) for their Spirit of Innovation for an outbound, personalized video messaging campaign delivered by Apogee. Later in the year, the utility jumped to the 1^st Quartile for customer satisfaction in J. D. Power’s Midwest Region – Large Segment. The 24-point bump occurred following the video bill explanations campaign moving from pilot to full scale.

Other significant achievements:

• Over 10 million outbound messages generated positive customer impressions. Personalized video messaging resulted in a 15% reduction in high bill calls to the utility.
• Outbound messages garnered unique click-through rates of 37%, the equivalent to 18 times the industry standard.
• 97% of utility customers reported they found the video bill explanation useful.
• 99% of customers receiving the video bill explanation reported that their perception of the utility had improved or remained the same.
• Mid-cycle alerts gave utility customers a chance to change behavior before a high bill occurred, helping utilities avoid calls and provide a more cost-effective service.
• Apogee’s home energy analysis module generated 1 million calculations giving customers personalized insights about how their home uses energy and providing valuable home profile data for the utility.

“Apogee has been dedicated to helping utilities build engaging customer relationships for more than 25 years, Susan Gilbert, CEO, Apogee Interactive explained. “Our incredibly loyal client base of hundreds of US utilities continues to grow. Last year we added 7 new major clients and expanded contracts with 9 others.” Gilbert added, “Apogee’s clients awarded our company with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 36, well above the overall NPS for software providers, which is 30.”

Apogee recently announced its latest platform enhancements which include text to speech, multilingual options, a rate communications series, electric vehicle and solar analysis, marketing automation, and a drill-down feature letting customers go from monthly disaggregated data down to daily displayed by end-use.  The firm has also launched a new targeted video bill explanation that includes calls to action that drives program participation.

Apogee enters the next decade as a trusted partner and true pioneer in the field of customer engagement. As utilities embark into this new era, Apogee’s proven engagement strategies will be essential to meeting the next generation’s expectations.

About Apogee:

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a privately held, woman-owned business and one of the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement SaaS services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, targeted, relevant, and personalized communication for hundreds of North American utilities, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, ConEd, LADWP, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Contact: Karen Morris kmorris@apogee.net or 678-684-6801

Helping Utilities Build Strong Relationships for a New Era of Energy

Atlanta, Jan. 14, 2020, Today Apogee Interactive, Inc., a leading provider of energy analysis and customer engagement software for the energy industry, unveiled it’s 2019 Feature Pack. Each year Apogee listens intently to clients and tracks the effectiveness of their applications and digital strategies. This year’s focus was on helping energy professionals meet their goals by improving customer satisfaction, cost-effectiveness, and increasing program participation.

Apogee’s Chief Technology Officer, Jim Albert stated, “Our primary focus has been on Envoy, our outbound communications platform, which is producing extraordinary results for our clients. We have included a turnkey digital marketing campaign flexible enough to fit into any utility’s existing marketing and communications plan and have added a robust marketing automation functionality for continued engagement at key touchpoints in the customer journey that will drive program participation with an automated chain of timely, relevant messages.”

The popular Personalized Video Bill Explanation, a part of the Envoy solution, now includes text to speech; the video will vocalize customer’s bill-change amounts in addition to displaying the numbers on the screen. It can also be embedded in the Energy Advisor Bill Analysis portal. A new Targeted Bill Explanation includes a specific call-to-action aligned with the utility’s programs and that customer’s needs.  This provides an even more personalized experience for the customer in a self-educating environment. Utilities have experienced a reduction in high bill calls as a result.

Rate transformation can be a challenge and communicating that in an effective way can help. Envoy now has a rate transformation series that includes video communications combined with a rate analysis engine that allows customers to choose the rate plan most suited to their lifestyles and behaviors.

All of Apogee’s Energy Advisor users will notice fresh, new user interface along with enhanced accessibility (ADA), multi-lingual functionality, and the addition of electric vehicles and solar to the home profile, enabling a breakdown of solar energy in the bill analysis along with solar recommendations customized for the utility’s program initiatives. The Enterprise platform also now includes the ability to drill-down from monthly to daily energy use analysis.

Susan Gilbert, Apogee’s CEO and co-founder explained, “Apogee has been refining our applications and helping utilities with their most pressing issues for more than 25 years.  Our current focus is on helping them build interactive, digital relationships with customers with cost-effective, personalized messaging that drives program goal achievement and communicates new rate options.”

About Apogee:

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a woman-owned business and one of the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement SaaS services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, targeted, relevant, and personalized communication for hundreds of North American utilities, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, ConEd, LADWP, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Contact: Karen Morris kmorris@apogee.net or 678-684-6801

PLMA Honors Founder Joel Gilbert, P.E. Chief Software Architect, Apogee Interactive

Today at the 40^th Peak Load Management Alliance (PLMA) conference in St. Petersburg Florida, Apogee’s Chief Software Architect, and founder of PLMA, Joel Gilbert, joined more than 300 utility professionals focused on issues around rate transformation, demand response (DR) and distributed energy resources (DER). Mr. Gilbert was accompanied by Apogee’s CEO Susan Gilbert and Ahmad Faruqui, PhD., Principal of the Brattle Group, who presented on the panel regarding rate transition.

This distinguished panel of demand response and rate design experts began with a tongue-in-cheek version of Dr. Seuss’s “Sam I am.” the anecdotal verse putting a positive spin on the issue of rate transformation concluding that utility customers can, through proactive education, learn to embrace new rate plans.

Dr. Faruqui, who has worked with over 150 utilities on 5 continents, shared lessons learned in his 40-year career of solving issues around rate design, customer engagement, and demand forecasting.

In addition to the panel discussion, Apogee’s VP of Business Development, Ann Fracas, and Jacksonville Energy Authority’s Conservation Coordinator, Brian Pippin, presented how JEA and Apogee developed an innovative campaign strategy using proactive, personalized video messaging to engage customers and communicate complex rate options.

Mrs. Fracas explained, “We have proven results that Apogee’s digital strategies cost-effectively drive program results.” She continued, “In one case study, Lakeland Electric has reached and surpassed their goals by as much as 5 times using Apogee’s personalized messaging, and getting 15% unique click-through rates, 7 times the industry standard of 2%.

During the conference, Joel Gilbert received special recognition for his significant contributions to the energy industry, his founding of the PLMA, and for his service as past chairman of the organization.

About Apogee:

Apogee Interactive is a woman-owned business and one of the nation’s leading full-service providers of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive and personalized communication to hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, 678-684-6800, kmorris@apogee.net

Municipals Build Stronger Customer Relationships Using Personalized Messaging

For Immediate Release:

Atlanta, GA Oct. 28, 2019 Today at the American Public Power Association’s (APPA) Customer Connections Conference in New Orleans, LA, Apogee Interactive’s Executive Vice President, Jim Malcom shared how utilities are engaging customers using personalized outbound communications. Apogee is the public power industry’s Hometown Connections preferred provider for Customer Engagement.  APPA’s annual Customer Connections Conference draws more than 400 utility professionals from US municipals to focus on customer service, energy services, key accounts, and public communications.

Malcom presented results and conclusions from Apogee’s work with hundreds of municipals over several decades.  In a case study from Lakeland Electric, Apogee’s EMPOWER digital engagement platform is achieving five-times greater digital participation than expected.  Especially popular are the mid-cycle bill alerts to customers giving them time to change behavior before the high bill arrives.  These alerts garnered open rates of 72%, 5 times the industry standard. In addition, whenever their bill is higher by a trigger amount, Lakeland customers receive a personalized video-bill explanation that achieved unique click-through rates of 15%, seven times the industry standard of 2%. Lakeland enlisted a firm to gather feedback from customers about the platform that revealed 86% customer satisfaction among users.

Mr. Malcom drove his point home referencing J. D. Power’s 2018 and 2019 Utility Digital Experience Study that proves utilities continue to lag the retail sector by as much as 200 points on a 1000-point scale. He also cited Accenture studies that show digitally engaged customers are 80% more likely to take part in utility programs and 69% more satisfied.

“In this era of corporate giants like Amazon and Google and other aggregators eying our customer relationships, it is imperative utilities engage with customers in an ongoing dialogue.” Malcom continued, “Whoever gets the customer’s engagement and trust wins in this new era where disintermediation could leave the power company as simply providing wires to the home.” He added, “Prospering in these transitional times will require building strong customer relationships that are personal, relevant, and meaningful to customers.”

Apogee’s EMPOWER platform provides a turn-key digital marketing and communications strategy, that includes personalized video bill explanations, mid-cycle alerts, monetized energy recommendations, and energy forecasts that show daily energy costs in the context of the weather. The platform includes videos with calls to action that drive program participation as well as its flagship online energy audit, Energy Advisor, that collects home profile data allowing utilities to further personalize and target messages to customers.

About Apogee:

Apogee Interactive, Inc. is a woman-owned business and one of the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement SaaS services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, targeted, relevant, and personalized communication for hundreds of North American utilities, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Lakeland Electric, Nashville Electric, LADWP, Electric Cities of GA and ElectriCities of NC. Apogee is the Hometown Connections Preferred Provider of Customer Engagement. For more information visit apogee.net or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/99046/.

Empowering Utilities with High Impact Video Messaging

Today Apogee Interactive announced the release of their comprehensive proactive video communication series for electric utilities introducing new rate structures.  Building on their unprecedented success with Personalized Video Messages for bill explanations and other relevant messaging, Apogee is now applying this proven technique to this growing communication need.  Many utilities have announced time-based rates or are evaluating options for moving beyond volumetric pricing models. All are concerned about potentially damaging their brand or customer satisfaction rankings when these new rates are implemented.

Apogee’s Personalized Video Messaging – Rate Series is carefully crafted to communicate the availability and advantages of each new rate.  Accompanying online calculators help customers evaluate the various options in the context of their usage patterns and flexibility.  Moving to the new rate is facilitated by readily available clickable sign-up links.

A recently released HubSpot report The State of Video Marketing in 2019 shows a stunning 87 percent of marketers are using video to deliver their messages today. The same report shows customers prefer video as a learning tool for product instructions and explanations. Studies continue documenting that retention of a video message runs 95 percent vs. 10 percent when simply read as text.

Personalized video messaging using a customer’s billing history, home profile data, and/or AMI data has a proven track record with dozens of Apogee’s utility clients experiencing remarkable results, some in use for more than 5 years with insignificant customer opt-outs and extraordinarily positive customer reaction.

Apogee CEO & Co-Founder, Susan Gilbert, states, “Rate-change communication should begin long before the change impacts the bill, giving customers time to learn and adjust, and showing them the available choices.”  She added, “Customers appreciate transparency and the chance to make informed decisions, which can even lead to higher customer satisfaction and better customer engagement.”  She continued, “Apogee’s Personalized Video Messaging gets 92% positive feedback from utility customers and click through rates an astounding 15 times industry standards. Surveys show that 99% of recipients would like to continue receiving the videos and we have seen Net Promoter Scores double with customers receiving the videos.”

The Personalized Video Messaging – Rate Series can be used as a stand-alone solution or in conjunction with other video messaging modules like Bill Explanation, Beat-the-Peak, Storm Notification, and Mid-Cycle Bill Alerts. The rates series includes personalized rate explanations and bill predictions customized for each rate choice, optional solar and electric vehicle clips, and potential dollar savings predictions for each new rate. Utilities will benefit with enhanced customer engagement, improved program participation, better brand perception and fewer calls to the call center.

To learn more about this powerful high impact communications strategy contact info@apogee.net or visit apogee.net .

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is a woman-owned business and one of the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. As a partner with the energy industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive and personalized communication to hundreds of North American utilities from coast-to-coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Eversource, ConEd, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net or LinkedIn.

Energy Industry Veteran is Dedicated to Empowering Utilities

Atlanta GA, March 19, 2019, Apogee Interactive, one of the nation’s leading providers of proactive customer engagement software for U.S. energy utilities, announced today their expansion in the northeast with the hiring of David Wells.  Dave will head the firm’s regional operations out of Boston and will continue strengthening long-term relationships with Apogee’s clients.

Mr. Wells brings to Apogee Interactive over 25-years of experience on the retail-side of the utility business working both for and with energy utilities.  After earning his electrical engineering degree from Northeastern, where he also completed his MBA, Dave entered the industry working for utilities that are now part of National Grid.

Always working in the energy sector, Dave has held various positions with service providers in the northeast.  After 13 years with National Grid in engineering and key account management roles, Dave moved outside the utility business joining EnerNOC to deliver savings to large C&I customers and utilities both here and abroad.  His background spans areas including utility and enterprise SaaS solutions, customer engagement, demand response, renewable energy, energy efficiency, smart-grid data analytics, and regulation.

Apogee CEO and Co-Founder, Susan Gilbert, says “We are delighted to have Dave join our incredibly talented and dedicated team.  His knowledge, experience, and location will help us better serve our clients in the northeast and enables us to expand our footprint in the region.”

Dave will be responsible for Apogee’s long-time clients in the northeast region, getting first-hand knowledge of the value of the expansive Empower Platform they are currently using, and the real-time value statements Apogee is dedicated to delivering clients.  He will also be responsible for assuring clients and future customers are informed of the continually expanding feature set and aware of early-adopter opportunities as they become available.

Dave can be reached at Apogee’s headquarter number, 678-684-6816, his direct line, 617-620-6590, or by e-mail, at  dwells@apogee.net.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is a woman-owned business and is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. As a partner with the energy industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive and personalized communication to hundreds of North American utilities from coast-to-coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Eversource, ConEd, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net or LinkedIn.

Enhancing the Customer Experience and Improving Brand Perception

Atlanta, GA –  Today during the Association of Energy Service Professionals’ (AESP) 29^th National Conference in San Antonio, Texas, attended by more than 700 utility professionals, Xcel Energy was recognized for outstanding achievement in customer engagement. AESP is dedicated to bringing veteran and young energy industry professionals together to highlight the most forward-thinking energy companies and to help advance their careers. The AESP Energy Award is granted to select utilities annually to recognize the spirit of innovation. Xcel Energy’s outbound communications program, developed by Apogee Interactive, combines customer engagement, customer satisfaction, education, and program promotions.

Xcel Energy’s Personalized Video Messaging (PVM) program has achieved strong results in customer engagement using proactive, personalized videos to educate customers about how to lower their electric bills, prepare for heating and cooling seasons, delivers annual energy summaries as well as and an email message with information about online energy audits and other programs.

The pilot program, which has now gone to scale, showed that 89 percent of Xcel Energy customers found the videos were very or somewhat useful, with 93 percent giving encouraging feedback. Of the recipients responding, 58 percent reported an improved perception of the Xcel Energy brand.

Engagement, as measured by open and click-thru rates were equally impressive.  Open rates topped 50 percent with click-thru rates of 16 percent, an increase over what the company typically experiences. Perhaps the most notable accomplishment of the pilot was the 15 percent reduction in calls to the contact center from the treatment group receiving the personalized videos vs. the control.

Apogee’s CEO, Susan Gilbert stated, “Today’s highly competitive marketplace has proven that regardless of industry, companies that deliver personal and relevant messaging find increased customer engagement.” She added, “Our clients are seeing astounding and lasting results with our outbound communications platform, Apogee is proud to serve Xcel Energy and support their innovative approach to customer engagement.”

About Apogee Interactive: Apogee Interactive is a woman-owned business and is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive and personalized communication to hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net  or on LinkedIn.

About Xcel Energy:

Xcel Energy (NASDAQ: XEL) provides the energy that powers millions of homes and businesses across eight Western and Midwestern states. Headquartered in Minneapolis, the company is an industry leader in responsibly reducing carbon emissions and producing and delivering clean energy solutions from a variety of renewable sources at competitive prices. For more information, visit xcelenergy.com or follow us on Twitter and Facebook

MREA Encourages a Proactive Approach to Communications

Today at the REMA Member Services and Winter Conference, in Bloomington, MN Apogee Interactive’s Sr. Account Manager, Stephanie Knight, shared a case study highlighting the successes utilities are achieving with Apogee’s outbound communications strategy that includes the ENVOY digital engagement platform. The Rural Electric Management Association (REMA) that hosts the conference provides education and training to utility professionals across Minnesota. REMA is organized by the Minnesota Rural Electric Association to help prepare member cooperatives for success in the evolving energy industry. The conference agenda focuses on best practices in marketing, communications, member services, and the latest energy innovations and technologies.

Ms. Knight’s presentation titled, “Turning High Bill Complaints into High Bill Compliments” shared the benefits utilities and their members are experiencing using this omnichannel approach to communications. The robust digital engagement tools in the platform have provided accurate bill analysis for millions of homes across the US.

Utilities sending personalized video bill messages are seeing sustained open rates of 50% and click through rates of 25%. These numbers reflect 10 times increase over energy industry standards.

Shari Wormwood, communications specialist, at MREA explained, “We are trying to encourage our members to shift from being reactive to proactive and we are looking at Apogee’s solutions to help us do that. The bitter cold winters in Minnesota can come with significantly higher bills, and we want to help members understand why.”

Knight’s presentation included one utility case where a member called and thanked the General Manager for sending a notice that their bill would be higher than normal. This is just one example of turning a high bill complaint into a high bill compliment. Listen to the sound bite here.

Apogee’s outbound communications platform includes energy summary reports, personal video bill explanations, energy alerts, and emails. Apogee’s clients using these methods are achieving extraordinary results that include increased satisfaction scores and reduced high bill calls to the call center.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is a woman-owned business and is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive and personalized communication to hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/99046/.

About MREA:

The Minnesota Rural Electric Association is a nonprofit trade association serving Minnesota’s electric cooperatives. MREA provides legislative and regulatory representation, director and employee training programs, technical training for electric cooperative line workers, and serves as the focal point for the cooperatives to work together. There are 44 distribution cooperatives and six generation and transmission members of MREA.

Media Contact: Karen Morris – 678-684-6801 or kmorris@apogee.net

Putting Members in Control of their Energy Use

For Immediate Release:

Atlanta, GA  Today in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Electric Cooperative’s Manager of Marketing and Member Services, Autumn McMahon, and Apogee Interactive’s Account Manager, Stephanie Knight, presented OEC’s case study at Oklahoma Association of Electric Cooperative’s Public Relations / Member Relations fall conference. This year’s conference focuses on how utilities can use big data to better inform and engage members.

Since the onset of mandatory TOU rates in 2013 and impending rate increases, Oklahoma Electric Cooperative realized it was crucial to help members better understand their bills. Ms. McMahon was instrumental in launching OEC’s member education campaign, knowing members needed relevant and proactive communications.

McMahon shared her strategy for building strong member relationships, reducing the need to make bill inquiry calls, and educating OEC members on ways to save energy. The pilot program she launched this year included mid-cycle bill alerts letting customers know in advance what their bills were forecasted to be while there is still time to influence them.  It also included links to a home energy audit that lets members profile their home and receive tips on saving money.  Beginning in January of 2018 with a soft launch sending 1,400 mid-cycle email alerts, the program has grown to more than 153,000 bill alerts containing links to the online audit the energy audit calculator and other energy education resources.

Results were remarkable!  Recipients reported these statistics:

• 92% want to continue to receive the email alerts.
• 94% rated alerts very or somewhat useful.
• Email open rates were well above expected, averaging 42%.

“These messages are thoughtfully helpful during peak periods of usage & can help us prepare (plan to save ahead) for high peak periods if necessary! THANK YOU for considering our situations & ideas. It will help ALL of us!” OEC Member

“I love getting this information. Please don’t stop.” OEC Member

During the program, the online energy audit was used to make 11,470 calculations increasing the number of home profiles. OEC is using the data collected in the home profile combined with AMI data to further personalize and target members for programs and rebate offers.

According to McMahon, “The best part of this program is my team doesn’t do the leg work.  We have a 30-minute call once a month with the Apogee team.” Putting the member in control of their energy use and taking away the surprise of a higher than normal bill is building stronger relationships with members and starting meaningful conversations.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is a woman-owned business and is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive and personalized communication to hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/99046/.

About OEC:

Oklahoma Electric Cooperative is the state’s largest member-owned electric cooperative and provides electricity to over 44,000 members and 55,000 accounts in seven central Oklahoma counties. The service area includes approximately 2,200 square miles and 5,500 miles of line.

Apogee Reveals the Breadth of the 2018 Feature Pack Release

Apogee Interactive revealed extensive updates to their energy analysis and communications platform Empower on four exclusive online user events held this week. Throughout the year Apogee’s account representatives work closely with utilities to address issues of concern. Representatives then report those ideas back to Apogee’s development team which in turn produces digital solutions and improvements to the current platform.

Speaking to the user group, Apogee’s Chief Marketing Officer, Lynn England said, “Today’s energy industry is undergoing tremendous change. We are finding our utility clients are concerned about topics such as promoting beneficial electrification through electric vehicles, communicating solar and net metering, and using creative digital engagement that catches the eyes and attention of their customers. This year’s feature pack will address these subjects and more.”

The new feature pack for enterprise customers includes solar and net metering options embedded into the home profile. This feature will allow utilities to address community solar, and rooftop solar. Social media tools such as responsive public service videos and advertisements to drive awareness of programs are included in this feature pack.

Utilities that subscribe to Apogee’s outbound communications service, Envoy, will now have access to a full video library of more than 50 videos. The 2018 feature pack introduces an interactive video that allows users to choose topics of interest, click on a link to relevant utility programs and give feedback. These videos all end with a call to action decided by the utility.

All Apogee clients will now have access to the electric vehicle module installed as part of the home profile to help customers understand the impact of EV’s on their home energy use. In addition, all users will now experience a guided tour that will enhance the customer experience and insure higher completion rates. Improvements and updates have also been applied to the home energy libraries, and Kid’s Korner energy education content. Users will also have the option to select if they rent or own their home, this feature allows recommendations to be relevant to a homeowner or renter.

Apogee’s standalone Field Audit application now allows field auditors to access historical data, start where they left off, or print a blank input form where there is no connectivity. The field audit user interface has been updated to improve and streamline the experience and provide more detail.

The Empower Platform includes a proprietary RESNET® accredited energy analysis engine that drives accuracy and consistency. This SaaS suite includes energy calculators, energy forecasting, reference libraries, promotional, and public service videos as well as a full outbound communications system that includes personalized video bill explanations, conditional response bill summary video, and energy alerts. Each of these applications are designed to collect marketing intelligence to further enhance and personalize the customer experience.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. Serving the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform is used by hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Consolidated Edison, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net or on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, 678-684-6801 or kmorris@apogee.net

Helping Utilities Turn Challenges into Opportunities

Atlanta GA, The team at Apogee Interactive has identified several significant challenges facing utilities today. Apogee’s utility visionaries have combined their insight to the energy industry with client feedback to create new capabilities offered in their latest feature pack release set for September 25^th.

Lead by Chief Software Architect, Joel Gilbert and Chief Technology Officer, Jim Albert, Apogee’s development team has focused on ways of effectively communicating the complicated topic of solar, net metering, new rate structures, and the impact of electric vehicles. Apogee is helping utilities move from energy efficiency and demand response towards customer engagement, operational efficiencies, and beneficial electrification.

For many years, outside of their whole-house cost and savings analyzer, Apogee has offered specialized tools for helping customers understand the cost impacts of solar, EVs, and various alternative electric rates.  But customers usually pay one bill and don’t think of these as separate issues.  This release wraps them all together and lets customers model whatever scenarios they are considering.

Gilbert explained, “Our solar module predicts the actual solar generation and add that back into the net metered results when analyzing the customers energy use.” Adding, “Whether they are looking at roof-top or community solar programs, customers can use our new release to get a realistic and un-biased estimate of solar production and cost impacts for their homes.”

Apogee has provided analysis for electric vehicles for many years, but this release is designed to help utilities promote electric vehicle adoption by showing realistic side-by-side savings predictions. The module will be included in the overall home energy analysis.

The big Feature Pack reveal is being presented in a series of webinars scheduled for September 25^th and 27^th.  Watch this short video with Jim Albert, to learn more.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. Serving the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform is used by hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Consolidated Edison, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net  or on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, 678-684-6801 or kmorris@apogee.net

Apogee Addresses Utility Clients’ Needs in New Feature Pack

September 5, 2018, Apogee Interactive’s Chief Technology Officer, Jim Albert, announced today that his team is releasing new, cutting-edge features that enhance and expand Apogee’s current software offerings. This feature pack release will be available to existing and new clients on September 25, 2018.  New features help utilities address today’s most challenging topics, including communicating solar options, net metering, electric vehicles, new rate structures, and adding more personalized videos to the outbound messaging platform.

Mr. Albert explained, “Apogee knows the energy industry.  We listen intently to our clients’ needs.” He added, “Issues around community solar, electric vehicles, and communicating new rates have been top of mind this year, and the success of Personal Video Messaging has led to an explosive expansion of our video library.”

Apogee will share details of the of the 2018 feature pack in a series of webinars on September 25^th and 27^th.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. Serving the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s comprehensive digital engagement platform is used by hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net  or on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, 678-684-6801 or kmorris@apogee.net

New VP of Business Development Focused on Utility Solutions

For Immediate Release:

Atlanta, GA, June 27, 2018,  Apogee Interactive continues to expand its staff in 2018 with the promotion of Ann Fracas to vice president of business development. Mrs. Fracas will join the executive team along with Lynn England newly named chief marketing officer, Jim Malcom, chief operating officer, and Jim Albert, chief technology officer.

According to Susan Gilbert, Apogee co-founder and CEO, “Ann shares our passion for this business and brings the leadership needed to deliver excellence for our clients.” She added, “Our team has embraced her coaching and is modeling her rigorous approach to relationship-building and problem-solving for our expansive and growing client base.”

“In just a few short months Ann’s leadership has brought added structure and accountability to our business development and client services departments,” Lynn England said, “In addition, Ann’s ability to find the right solutions for our utility clients’ needs fits well with Apogee’s corporate philosophy of being a trusted partner to energy companies. Our executive management team is pleased to have her aboard.”

Prior to joining Apogee Interactive, Ann was an enterprise sales executive in the technology and consulting industries. Her career started at Georgia Power in IT and then moved to sales at Adobe, Foxit, and DayNine Consulting Services. Ann focuses on a consultative ‘customer first’ approach driven by business needs, and value.  She is a Georgia Tech graduate, having received her Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management with a concentration in Information Systems.  She has a passion for developing strong long-term business relationships, and finding the right solutions to maximize a client’s investment.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. Serving the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform is used by hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net  or on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, info@apogee.net or 678-684-6801

Municipals Embrace New Digital Engagement Methods

For Immediate Release:

Today at the American Public Power Association (APPA) National Conference in New Orleans attended by more than 1200 municipal utility professionals, Apogee Interactive, Inc. shared the results of four years’ experience sending millions of personalized video messages to utility customers.  Apogee is the newest addition to the Hometown Connections Partnership, and was invited to share what they do for hundreds of US utilities.  The firm was honored at a Hometown Connections Partnership appreciation breakfast on Tuesday morning.

According to Susan Gilbert, the firm’s CEO and co-founder, “Use of this type of messaging is exploding as utilities are finding customers love receiving them. Feedback is overwhelmingly positive.  One general manager of a North Carolina utility shared with us a voice mail recording from a customer raving about receiving one, saying, ‘We’re used to getting customer high bill complaints, but this is a first getting a high bill compliment!’”  The caller was referring to the video bill explanation she had received and wanted to express her gratitude for having it explained that the higher bill was due to it being 10 degrees colder and there being additional days in the billing period.

According to Apogee’s experience and studies, other proven benefits of personalized video messaging include:

• 15x higher email click through rates than industry standards
• Proven reduced calls to the contact center
• 58% improved perception of their utility
• Double digit improvement in customer satisfaction
• Increased program participation
• Improved program targeting

Gilbert added, “Customers often don’t know they are served by their city and don’t know the advantages that offers them.”  That observation led to Apogee producing a Welcome Series of personalized videos.  “Upon establishing new service, customers receive a personalized video letting them know the benefits of being served by the city and that additional videos will be coming to help them understand their bills and available programs,” she continued.  Subsequent videos are triggered when billing or usage data signals there may be a problem or an opportunity to participate in a program matching their usage profile.

The cost-effectiveness of this new communication method is a major factor in its success.  Apogee developed a technique for delivering personalized messages at costs a fraction of alternative messaging methods.

 About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. Serving the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform is used by hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net  or on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, info@apogee.net or 678-684-6801

Personalized Video Messaging in the Energy Industry

Atlanta, GA – May 23, 2010 –Apogee Interactive’s CEO & Co-Founder, Susan Gilbert and co-presenter Suzanne McCloskey, Research Technology and Strategy Analyst, Consumers Energy, conducted a Video Messaging Master Class today at the Association of Energy Service Professionals (AESP) 2018 Spring Conference.  Susan highlighted recent pilots including one for Xcel Energy (XEL).

Apogee analyzed 500,000 Xcel customer billing histories to find the best candidates for various programs.  Treatment and control groups were established to measure how customers valued the messaging, and how the messaging affected customers’ perception of the utility. Results showed reduced calls to the call center and that 58% reported improved perception of their utility.

“While many of our distributions achieve extraordinary click-through rates, some nearly 20 times the industry average, the biggest surprise was how customer interest increased as subsequent  videos were sent,” said Susan Gilbert, Apogee CEO.  “Our second video received three times more viewers than the first, and the third was higher than the second,” she added.

“Up until now video messaging simply named the items on the bill and were considered cost-prohibitive at around a dollar per message.” Susan explained, “What is different now is the analysis explains impacts of weather, days of service, rate changes and behavior impacts, and most remarkably, all at pennies a message.”

“What was viewed as too expensive, utilities are now embracing as the most affordable, high impact method of engaging customers,” she concluded.

During the Video Messaging Master Class attendees were given the what, how, and why of offering their customers personalized video messages. Ms. Gilbert explained the ease of secure billing data transfer, setting up treatment and control groups, creative content development, and the evaluation process.

According to WordStream, 51% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI. In addition, viewers retain 95% of a video message compared to 10% reading text. With their application of machine learning and predictive analytics, Apogee software architects predict this is only the beginning of data integration technology that will provide customers more meaningful engagement with their energy providers.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers digital proactive and personalized digital communication to hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net  or LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, info@apogee.net or 678-684-6800

Turning High Bill Complaints into High Bill Compliments

May 10, 2018 – Atlanta GA, – Today at National Rural Electric Cooperative Association’s (NRECA) Connect Conference in Salt Lake City, UT, Apogee Interactive’s Sr. Account Manager, Cindy Smallwood, and Tri-County EMC’s, Manager of Marketing and Member Services, Bob Kornegay, shared their case study highlighting the stunning success of Tri-County EMC’s outbound communications strategy using Apogee’s ENVOY digital engagement platform. NRECA’s annual Connect Conference draws more than 600 utility professionals from cooperatives across the US. The conference agenda focuses on best practices in marketing, communications, member services, and the latest energy innovations and technologies.

“I am not surprised Bob Kornegay is an early adopter of our personalized video bill solution. He is dedicated to raising the bar on member engagement and providing the best resources for his members,” said Cindy Smallwood, Apogee Interactive.

Mr. Kornegay began planning Tri-County EMC’s new engagement strategy in May of 2017. Today he is sending personalized video bill messages to his members with sustained open rates of 50% and click through rates of 25%. These numbers reflect a 10 times increase over energy industry standards.

Kornegay said, “When I receive a call from a member thanking me for sending a notice that their bill will be higher than normal, I know we are on the right track.” He added, “Cooperatives shouldn’t fear engaging with members through multiple communications channels, our members want to hear from us and when the message is relevant, proactive, and personal our member satisfaction rises.”

Listen to Tri-County EMC’s HIGH BILL COMPLIMENT!

Apogee’s outbound communications platform includes energy summary reports, personal video bill explanations, energy alerts, and emails. Apogee’s clients using these methods are achieving extraordinary results that include increased satisfaction scores and reduced calls to the call center across the board.

About Apogee Interactive:

Apogee Interactive is a woman-owned business and is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers digital proactive and personalized digital communication to hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company, Lakeland Electric, and Jackson EMC. For more information visit apogee.net or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/99046/.

About Tri-County EMC:

Tri-County EMC is a non-profit rural electric utility cooperative. We were chartered on May 8th, 1940, by way of the Rural Electrification Act and have since been an affiliate of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. We provide safe, efficient electric energy to our members of Wayne, Duplin, Lenoir, Johnston, Jones, Sampson and Wilson counties. Tri-County EMC is a member-driven cooperative committed to providing reliable electric power at a reasonable cost, to offering superior service, and to taking an active role in supporting the communities it serves.

Contact: Karen Morris, Apogee Interactive, 678-684-6800 or info@apogee.net

Empowering the Advancement of Women in Energy

For Immediate Release:

Atlanta, GA – April 3, 2018, Apogee Interactive announced today their endorsement of ADVANCE: The Power Conference for Women in Utilities.  The event, organized by Conferences Connect and hosted at Southern Company Gas in Atlanta on April 16^th and 17^th, will include presentations by women in leadership positions from utilities like Georgia Power, Exelon, Eversource, NiSource, and many more. Apogee Interactive’s Ann Fracas, Director of Sales, will moderate and summarize the key issues of the program.

Susan Gilbert, CEO and Co-Founder of Apogee Interactive, a woman owned business that has served utilities exclusively for more than 25 years remembers, “When I began my career, women in the energy industry were rare. Women didn’t have the mentors, role models, coaches, or networks that were available to their male counterparts.” She continued, “So many strong women persevered and made a difference. This meeting is a chance for those pioneers to give back and encourage the women following them.”

Ashley Baptiste, CEO, Conferences Connect, the event producer explained, “When the topic of ‘Women in Utilities’ was raised, I thought ‘Is this really still an issue?’ After some quick research on current statistics, we realize that yes – this is an issue, and we need to bring utilities together to learn from each other.” Ashley continued, “This conference has a dual mission: 1) to help utilities learn how to attract, retain, mentor and advance women in their organizations and 2) to help utility professionals gain the skills and networking to advance their careers.”

Southern Company Gas, the conference host, has offered their meeting facility in Atlanta.  In addition, Laura Creekmur, Vice President of Corporate Communications at Southern Company Gas will be featured on the agenda.

To learn more about this inspiring event empowering the advancement of women in the energy industry visit www.utilityevents.com.

About Apogee:

Apogee Interactive is a woman-owned business and is the nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. As a partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers digital proactive and personalized digital communication to hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast, including some of the largest and most progressive, such as Southern Company (NYSE: SO), ConEd (NYSE: ED), PSEG (NYSE: PEG), and Tucson Electric Power (NYSE: TEP). For more information visit apogee.net or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/99046/.

About Conferences Connect:

Conferences Connect is a full-service conference firm specializing in creating events that foster engagement. This woman-owned business targets domestic and international clients and develops events specifically for the energy industry. Content seekers meet content providers. Solution providers meet solution seekers. Learn more at www.utilityevents.com.

Through content focused events, attendees are encouraged to establish a network with each other – to connect – and establish lasting, mutually beneficial relationships.

 Contact: Karen Morris kmorris@apogee.net or 678-684-6801

Personalized Utility Communications Increases Customer Satisfaction by 16%

 For Immediate Release:

Envoy Video

Atlanta, GA – Feb. 15, 2018, Apogee Interactive, Inc. announced today their latest innovation, Envoy, a complete outbound communications platform for utility customer communications. This end-to-end digital engagement strategy includes personalized energy bill analysis videos, mid-cycle and threshold alerts, email messaging, and periodic energy summary reports. Findings from pilot programs studied over the last several years prove stellar results including increased customer satisfaction and program participation. Another powerful statistic is Apogee’s outbound messaging is achieving click through rates more than 30 times the industry average.

One large investor-owned utility analyzed the effectiveness of energy summary reports with a control group of 40,000 participants. This group saw a 16% increase in customer satisfaction with no negative impact. Another pilot program featuring personalized video bill analysis, reported that 98% of the video recipients wanted to continue receiving the videos and 93% reported they felt this was an effective way of communicating why the utility bill changed from month to month.

Studies also prove high bills generate more calls to the call center than outages; the Envoy solution includes threshold and mid-cycle alerts that put the customer in control of their energy use, and reduces utility operating costs. By proactively communicating with customers through text or email alerts Envoy gives them a chance to make a difference in behavior that impacts their bill before they make a call.

“Today’s energy customers are more demanding; they expect personalized, relevant digital engagement with the companies they do business with,” stated Lynn England, V. P. of Customer Engagement, Apogee Interactive. “We are finding our early adopters are meeting and exceeding their goals using the Envoy platform,” he continued. “Successful utility professionals are embracing digital channels and realizing their impact on program participation, revenue generation, and cost reduction.”

Susan Gilbert, CEO & President of Apogee added, “Apogee’s energy modeling was RESNET rated at the highest ‘Home Rating’ level and ranked most accurate by a sizeable margin.  This enables utilities to provide consistent, correct information across all communications channels while positioning utility providers as trusted source of energy information.”

JD Power reports in their 2017 Residential Utility Customer Satisfaction Study that digital communications between utilities and their customers has risen approximately 5% in the past year. JD Power also attributes higher customer satisfaction scores to multi-channel communications.

Apogee will formally unveil its outbound communications platform Envoy at the Association of Energy Service Professionals 2018 National conference in New Orleans, LA on February 19^th.

About Apogee Interactive, Inc.

Apogee Interactive is nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. A partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers digital proactive, personalized communication to hundreds of North American utilities from coast to coast including some of the largest most progressive such as Southern Company (NYSE: SO), ConEd (NYSE: ED), PSEG (NYSE: PEG), and Tucson Electric Power (NYSE: TEP). For more information visit apogee.net  or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/99046/

Apogee Contact: Karen Morris – 678-684-6801 – kmorris@apogee.net

Major Milestone of Innovation & Leadership

For Immediate Release:

Atlanta, Feb. 1, 2018  —  As 2018 dawns, Apogee Interactive (AI), Inc. proudly enters its twenty-fifth year of service to the energy utility industry.  Part of that pride emanates from Navigant’s conclusion that Apogee was the most comprehensive energy-modeling software and services platform for customer engagement.  Founded in 1993 with the mission of leveraging new technologies to cost-effectively engage customers, the company today serves hundreds of utilities reaching millions of customers across the United States and Canada.  The proprietary modeling engine powering Apogee’s machine learning and business analytics engine has been RESNET accredited at the accuracy and HERS energy rating levels.

“Providing utilities with multi-channel, consistent, accurate, and relevant energy information ensures customers stay engaged.” said Susan Gilbert, Apogee’s CEO & Co-Founder.  “Helping customers make better energy decisions positions the utility as a trusted information source.” she added.

Apogee’s name was chosen by its founders for its definition, “being on the edge,” and for the acronym AI, reflecting their pioneering vision for delivering practical and cost effective Artificial Intelligence.  Both have been hallmarks of Apogee’s accomplishments.

Today, the software platform has grown to include residential and commercial energy analysis applications, personalized daily bill forecasts in a weather paradigm, and outbound communications strategies including energy summary reports, usage alerts, and personalized video bill analysis for utility customers, CSRs, and Field Auditors.

Capping their quarter century of prolific innovation, Apogee’s two latest offerings are revolutionizing the way utilities interact with customers, leapfrogging the market.  First, the Home Intelligence (HI!) services consisting of devices, communication protocols, software and user interfaces, uses precision temperature monitoring to assess home and system health, communicating back to customers alerting them of impending issues or improved operations.  And their latest, the new Alexa skill for Amazon Echo reaches into the customer’s home providing bill explanation and coaching and personalized energy cost forecasts.

About Apogee Interactive, Inc.

Apogee Interactive is nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. A partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s EMPOWER digital engagement platform delivers on-line and outbound proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. The company’s digital reach extends through hundreds of utilities reaching nearly half of US households and businesses, increasing utility customer satisfaction and cutting costs. Apogee’s cloud-based, SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, and improved program performance for utilities.

Energy leaders who use Apogee tools include Southern Company (SO), ConEdison (ED), FPL, Lakeland Electric, Jackson EMC, NOVEC, American Electric Power (AEP), Eversource (ES), PSEG (PEG), and many more.

For more information visit apogee.net or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/99046/ 

Contact: Karen Morris, kmorris@apogee.net , 678-684-6801

Follows Expansive Service Agreement with APPA Subsidiary in July

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Atlanta, GA (November 7, 2017) Apogee Interactive is pleased to announce its platinum sponsorship of the 2017 American Public Power Association (APPA) Customer Connections Conference, November 5-8 in Sacramento, CA, further highlighting its commitment to America’s public power utilities.

This past July, Apogee and Hometown Connections, the energy service subsidiary of the APPA, created a new partnership. As a result, APPA members can access the full range Apogee’s web-based services. These leading-edge tools include video messaging, interactive voice & text response, energy-use alerts, calculators & reports, and home energy audits powered by Apogee’s RESNET-accredited analysis engine, rated the most accurate in the industry.

“Apogee’s mission is delivering cutting-edge innovation to our utility clients, helping them cost-effectively engage and educate their customers,” said Susan Gilbert, Apogee CEO & Co-Founder.  “Educated customers make better energy decisions, which saves them money while positioning the utility as a trusted, credible information source,” she added. “We are delighted to be a partner with both the APPA and Hometown Connections, powering their efforts to help APPA utilities engage and educate their customers.”

Contact kmorris@apogee.net for complete details of how Apogee is enabling public power utilities to proactively engage their customers in personalized and meaningful ways, building trust and increasing satisfaction in the process.

Apogee Interactive, Inc. 

Apogee Interactive is one of the nation’s leading providers of customer engagement software services for the energy industry. Partnering with utilities since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net and follow on LinkedIn and Twitter at @apoweb.

Today in Sacramento, Jim Malcom, Apogee Executive Vice President, shared the firm’s new customer engagement solution for low income utility customers at the 8^th annual Behavior, Energy & Climate Change Conference.  This growing segment is increasingly difficult and costly for utilities to engage and serve. They tend to be expensive to serve due to the number of times they call, the number of truck rolls associated with service interruptions, and their inability to pay their bills.  As a result, they also tend to be a drag on the customer service scores.

“These customers are not hard to identify, they are hard to engage and influence using traditional methods,” said Malcom.  “Apogee’s service reduces costs and increases customer satisfaction by making these customers aware of how they use energy, how they can control their energy bills, as well as making them aware of the payment options best aligned with how they are paid.”

Apogee’s groundbreaking behavioral solution, EPIC (Engagement Platform for Information and Communication), uses simple, timely, personalized, automated communication methods widely proven effective with the general population and customized to this segment’s special needs.

EPIC is targeted to mobile phone users and employs multiple channels including email, SMS/text, and social media.  The program approach is perfectly suited to the low-income trade allies and community agents including churches, non-profits, and community action agencies. This multi-channel strategy extends the reach and fills the gaps of traditional communication approaches.

According to Susan Gilbert, Apogee CEO, “Lower income customers spend a disproportionately large percentage of their paychecks on energy and create most of the billing and payment inquiries. Apogee customized our time-tested tools to proactively engage and assist these customers, demonstrating their energy provider cares while giving customers a sense of choice and control in their lives.”

Customers learn to manage their energy use, improve the comfort of their homes, and lower their bills, while utilities benefit through increased customer satisfaction and reduced costs to serve.

Contact kmorris@apogee.net for complete details of the presentation and how EPIC is enabling utilities to connect with and better serve their low-income customers.

Apogee Interactive, Inc.

Apogee Interactive is one of the nation’s leading providers of customer engagement software services for the energy industry. Partnering with utilities since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net and follow on Linkedin and Twitter at @apoweb.

Personalization and Relevance Achieve Customer Engagement

Atlanta GA, Today in Denver at the 30^th anniversary of E Source’s Forum, with nearly 800 energy professionals registered, Apogee Interactive debuted their latest in a long list of firsts, surprising attendees and generating excitement about new innovative technologies. Energy professionals attending the Forum expect to learn about the latest energy trends and technologies.

Apogee chose this venue to unveil its latest success integrating its proprietary bill analysis algorithms with the Amazon Echo. With Apogee’s technology, Echo’s voice assistant, Alexa, responds to questions like, “Why has my bill changed from last month?” Alexa can now explain impacts such as weather, days of service, rate changes, and other factors related to home operation or behavior like guests in the home or changes to thermostat settings.

Using the same time-tested energy algorithms Apogee uses to power their comprehensive line of residential applications, Alexa pours over a customer’s 13-months of billing history along with weather coincident with the meter-read date and AMI data, when available, to give customers answers to commonly asked questions that can produce calls to the contact center.

Ken Black, E Source Co-Chairman, noted that this year’s registration is the highest in E Source history making it a perfect venue for such a launch.  “Apogee brings something new and insightful to the Forum, and we appreciate their commitment and focus on energy industry issues.”

Personalization continues to be Apogee’s hallmark message for energy professionals as demonstrated by their development of personalized energy summary reports and video bill explanations, all examples of what utilities can easily do to engage customers and build their digital presence.

According to Susan Gilbert, Apogee CEO and co-founder, “Personalization gives the utility an opportunity to be relevant to customers, and relevance causes customers to engage.”

In addition, Apogee demonstrated a new virtual presence device known to Big Bang Theory viewers as “Sheldonbot” or more aptly, “Joelbot,” since the virtual presence was that of the leading innovator in our industry, Apogee’s Chief Software Architect, Joel Gilbert, P.E.

Captivating attention and generating interest as he cruised the crowded aisles meeting and greeting friends and acquaintances, “Joelbot” was a show-stopper.  Conversations were warm and personal as he compared notes and caught up with colleagues he has known and consulted with for more than 30 years in the business.

Apogee Interactive, Inc.

Apogee Interactive is one of the nation’s leading providers of customer engagement software services for the energy industry. Partnering with utilities since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net and follow them on Linkedin and Twitter at @apoweb.

Media Contact: Karen Morris, Apogee Interactive, 678-684-6801, kmorris@apogee.net

New “EPIC” Suite of Digital Products Unlocks Engagement, Cost Savings

ATLANTA, GA – August 9, 2017 – Apogee Interactive announced the launch of EPIC, the Energy Platform for Information & Communication (EPIC) that provides a compelling suite of cutting-edge digital customer engagement tools specifically targeted to low-income consumers, renters, and residents of multi-family buildings.  It shows them realistic ways to save energy and money that builds trust and customer satisfaction in this crucial (and growing) market segment.

EPIC communicates energy information targeted to customers who lack the ability to make significant home energy efficiency investments. It emphasizes how they can realistically control their energy costs and gives them meaningful insights into how small changes in behavior can add up to substantial savings. The platform is based on a customized edition of Apogee’s flagship Energy Advisor analysis application that provides customers insight into their energy use, habits, and trends. EPIC leverages email and texting to supply on-the-go energy efficiency guidance enabling families to take charge of their spend. Tips are tailored to a consumers’ household profile and can often be implemented right away with no outside assistance and at little or no cost.

EPIC’s capabilities begin with targeting the right customers for relevant program participation, then recruits and enrolls them.  Not stopping there, it continues with personalized progress reporting to keep customers engaged and motivated.  In addition, the platform includes Apogee’s most popular Special Purpose Calculators that give customers a unique look at the energy footprint of their household electronics and appliances. Optional engagement enhancements to the base EPIC offering include video messaging, alerts, bill explanations, and energy summary reports.

“Apogee’s Energy Platform for Information & Communication produces truly epic results for utilities and customers alike,” says Apogee CEO, Susan Gilbert. “While customers enjoy personal messaging with guidance about savings, utilities achieve increased customer satisfaction rates and lower operating costs from reduced call volume, improved cash flow, and less bad debt.”

For more information about EPIC’s advantages and how it could help you support your hard-to-serve customers, contact Apogee.

About Apogee Interactive, Inc.

Apogee Interactive is nation’s leading full-service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. A partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers on-line and outbound proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. The company’s digital reach extends through more than 600 utilities to 48% of US households and businesses, increasing utility customer satisfaction and slashing costs. Apogee’s cloud-based, SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, and improved program performance for utilities. For more information visit apogee.net  or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/99046/

Apogee Contact: Karen Morris – 678-684-6801 – kmorris@apogee.net

Personalized, Outbound Energy Messaging for Public Power Residential Customers

Delivers Higher Satisfaction and Measurable Results

LAKEWOOD, CO and ATLANTA, GA – July 27, 2017 – Hometown Connections, the utility services subsidiary of the American Public Power Association, and  Apogee Interactive announced a partnership to provide online customer engagement and energy analysis tools to public power electric, gas, and water utilities. Apogee is the country’s leading provider of personalized, outbound messaging and analysis for residential customers.  Currently offering services to more than 600 utilities here and abroad, Apogee has an extraordinary 24-year track record of innovation, service, and customer loyalty.

Through Hometown Connections, American Public Power Association members gain access to products/services from industry leading vendors vetted and endorsed for public power, as well as consulting support in the areas of organization assessment, strategic planning, market research, and workforce solutions.

“Hometown Connections has long admired Apogee’s ability to transform utility data into attractive, online, easy-to-understand, personalized messaging for residential customers,” said Bill Smart, Senior Vice President, Business Development. “Apogee is a one-stop, best-in-class shop for an impressive array of customizable and measurable customer communications web-based platforms, including video messaging, interactive voice & text response, energy-use alerts, calculators & reports, and home energy audits. Through this new partnership, Apogee and Hometown Connections will help individual utilities, state associations, and joint action agencies offer public power customers personalized and relevant energy information to build trust while increasing satisfaction and engagement.”

“Apogee’s mission is delivering cutting-edge innovation to our utility clients, helping them cost-effectively engage and educate their customers,” said Susan Gilbert, Apogee CEO & Co-Founder.  “Educated customers make better energy decisions, which saves them money while positioning the utility as a trusted, credible information source,” she added. “We pride ourselves on exceptional customer loyalty and analytical excellence.”  Apogee’s analysis engine is RESNET accredited as the industry’s most accurate, capable of producing a HERS home rating.  “We are proud to be included as a Hometown Connections partner and look forward to expanding our services to more of the municipal marketplace.”

About Hometown Connections International, LLC

Hometown Connections is the utility services subsidiary of the American Public Power Association, offering public power utilities guidance and access to quality products/services from a trusted entity with public power’s best interests in mind. Hometown Connections personnel provide consulting support in the areas of organization assessment, strategic planning, governance development, market research, and staffing. Hometown Connections provides discounted pricing on technology, services, and other solutions from industry-leading companies. The products and services offered through Hometown Connections include the full range of advanced grid solutions, as well as financial and organizational management tools and consulting. For more information, visit www.hometownconnections.com, https://www.facebook.com/HTConnections, https://twitter.com/HTConnections.

About Apogee Interactive, Inc.

Apogee Interactive is nation’s leading full service provider of proactive customer engagement software services for utilities. A partner with the utility industry since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers on-line and outbound proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. The company’s digital reach extends through more than 600 utilities to 48% of US households and businesses, increasing utility customer satisfaction and slashing costs. Apogee’s SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, and improved program performance for utilities. For more information visit apogee.net  or Linkedin  https://www.linkedin.com/company/99046/

Media and Business Contacts

Hometown Connections:  Bill Smart | bsmart@hometownconnections.com  303-940-7331

Apogee Interactive: Karen Morris | kmorris@apogee.net  678-684-6801

Canadian Utility to Launch Apogee Interactive’s Energy Calculators for Residential & Commercial Customers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ATLANTA (May 18, 2017) –  A Canadian utility will soon launch Apogee Interactive’s Energy Advisor for its residential customers and Apogee’s Commercial Energy Calculator for business customers, proven industry-leading technologies designed to help customers lower their energy bills and leverage the utility’s energy efficiency products and services.

The partnership marks a milestone for Apogee, as it is Apogee’s first partnership with a Canadian utility provider. The Canadian utility plans to use the online tools to engage customers, providing them with more information on their usage and helping them understand how energy efficiency practices and behaviors can lower their power bills.

The Energy Advisor and Commercial Energy Calculator will help customers learn what drives their electric consumption and the factors that impact costs and fluctuations in their bill. Business customers who use the Commercial Energy Calculator will also be directed to efficient products and services offered by the utility to help them lower energy costs and improve their business’ bottom line.

Features of the Energy Advisor include:

• A responsive user interface
• Energy saving recommendations and links to programs
• Utility branding
• Usage analytics
• Energy libraries designed to further educate consumers who are engaged online.

The Commercial Energy Calculator incorporates the Energy Advisor features and can also assist account managers and commercial auditors. It offers a wide array of tools designed to better serve business customers of varying sizes.

“We are honored to be chosen by a Canadian utility to help them improve their customer experience,” said Susan Gilbert, President and CEO of Apogee Interactive. “Our Energy Advisor is a proven solution for utilities seeking to provide their customers with a hands-on, personalized experience.”

About Apogee Interactive

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading provider of customer engagement technology for utilities. Partnering with utilities since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to residential and commercial customers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs, and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net. Follow us on Twitter at @apoweb and on Linkedin.

Apogee Contact: Karen Morris – 678-684-6801 – kmorris@apogee.net

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ATLANTA (March 21, 2017) – Columbia Water & Light has selected Apogee Interactive to provide new customer engagement technologies to its customers to help them understand how behaviors, appliances and thermostat settings can impact their energy bill.

The municipal utility serving Columbia, Mo., began this month implementing Apogee’s Energy Advisor Enterprise, which includes the Energy Forecast and Bill Analysis applications along with personalized messages and alerts for customers. Columbia Water & Light chose Apogee because its solutions would be the most intuitive and easiest for customers to use, according to Jim Windsor, Assistance Director of Columbia Water & Light. The personalized video messaging for customers was also a key selling point, said Windsor.

“Many customers don’t understand how personal decisions and the weather impact their bill,” said Windsor.  “We believe the Apogee solution will engage customers and act as an extension of our energy efficiency and rebate programs.”

Columbia includes the University of Missouri and other colleges, which results in a customer base made up of many younger adults, some of whom are first-time utility customers. Columbia officials believe engaging their customers with new technologies is essential to delivering a positive customer experience and helping educate those customers. The customer engagement tools included in the Energy Advisor Enterprise will help direct customers to other efficiency and energy management programs and services when they go to their utility’s website, thus allowing the utility to save its advertising dollars previously spent to promote these programs or reallocate those funds to other communication needs.

Columbia’s customer service representatives will also be able to rely on Energy Advisor when customers call with questions about their energy usage.

“Our Energy Advisor has been helping hundreds of utilities for more than two decades, which gives us great insight to what customers need and expect from their utility,” said Susan Gilbert, President, and CEO of Apogee. “With our latest addition of proactive, personalized messaging, we look forward to helping Columbia Water & Light engage and educate their customers.”

About Columbia Water & Light

Columbia Water & Light is the municipal utility governed by the City of Columbia, Mo. It was formed by voter approval in 1904. Since that time, the utility has been furnishing Columbians with low cost, reliable electricity and high quality water. Columbia Water & Light serves more than 49,000 customers.

About Apogee Interactive

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading provider of customer engagement technology for utilities. Partnering with utilities since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to residential and commercial customers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs, and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net. Follow us on Twitter at @apoweb and on Linkedin. 

Apogee Contact: Karen Morris – 678-684-6801 – kmorris@apogee.net

Florida municipal utility the first to launch integrated EMPOWER suite of apps as it encourages customers to “Beat the Peak”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ATLANTA and LAKELAND, Fla. (March 9, 2017) – Lakeland Electric has launched the Apogee Interactive EMPOWER Platform suite of customer engagement applications to help its customers better understand their energy usage and give them choices in how they interact with their utility.

In conjunction with the launch of a new consumer-friendly website, Lakeland Electric chose the EMPOWER Platform because it puts utility customers in control of their energy consumption by recommending the most appropriate electric pricing plans, showing them how their personal behaviors as well as the weather impact electric bills, alerting them when their energy usage hits a certain level, and giving them detailed electric usage data by integrating with Lakeland Electric’s smart meter system.  By getting customers to be more efficient and thoughtful about their energy usage now, Lakeland Electric can help offset future generation costs and keep customer rates among the lowest in Florida.

These new digital channels will serve as the foundation for Lakeland Electric’s “Beat the Peak” promotional campaign aimed at educating customers and offering the pricing and service options. Lakeland Electric chose Apogee Interactive because its EMPOWER suite offered all of these tools wrapped into one solution with a level of personalized customer interaction unique to the industry.

“Lakeland Electric is advancing our customer’s knowledge, choice, and involvement through technology,” said Dave Kus, Assistant General Manager of Customer Service at Lakeland Electric. “The new analytical tools on our website allow us to introduce our customers to the utility of the future and empower them to be the energy consumers of the future.”

“We are honored to be working with Lakeland Electric in helping them further their customer engagement strategy,” said Susan Gilbert, President, CEO and Co-Founder of Apogee Interactive. “This is the first instance of a utility launching our fully integrated EMPOWER suite of applications on one platform, and Lakeland Electric’s approach in seeking to empower their customers is industry-leading. We are pleased to be their partner.”

The EMPOWER Platform incorporates a variety of Apogee’s technology allowing customers to conduct personalized digital energy audits using online calculators, receive energy usage and billing alerts via text, email and video messaging, get price plan recommendations based on their usage history, receive a home efficiency rating and a variety of educational content. Utility employees also benefit by accessing the tools to help them answer questions when handling a customer interaction. EMPOWER includes Apogee’s Energy Advisor, Energy Envoy, Energy Auditor, CSR Bill Analysis, and Home EnergyLibrary^TM and other applications.

About Lakeland Electric

Lakeland Electric is the third-largest public power utility in the State of Florida serving 126,000 customers with production capability of over 1100 Megawatts. The utility is also one of the first utilities established in Florida having started operation in 1889.

About Apogee Interactive

Apogee Interactive is the nation’s leading provider of customer engagement technology for utilities. Partnering with utilities since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to residential and commercial customers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs, and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net. Follow us on Twitter at @apoweb and on Linkedin.

Apogee Contact: Karen Morris – 678-684-6801 – kmorris@apogee.net

Lakeland Electric Contact: Cindy Clemmons – 863-430-1368 – cindy.clemmons@lakelandelectric.com

New Empower Platform Enables Coordinated, Cost-Effective Digital Engagement

 For Immediate Release:

Atlanta February 7th, 2017, The recent launch of Apogee Interactive’s Empower Platform marks an important new milestone in the company’s decades-long history of partnering with utilities to advance customer engagement. Consolidating Apogee’s customer-focused energy education software offerings into an integrated set of solutions, the Empower Platform enables utilities to better connect with their residential and small business customers.

At the foundation of the platform is Apogee’s Energy Advisor home energy analysis application; a mobile-optimized tool leveraged by hundreds of utilities across North America to promote awareness and engagement. Customers get started with Energy Advisor by profiling their homes and habits in an interactive, game-like survey that requires less than a minute to complete. A highly accurate report on their household energy consumption is then generated instantly, with personalized efficiency tips matched with relevant rebates and program offers for reducing usage and costs. To learn more, customers can interact with graphical breakdowns of their monthly and annual use and even explore a forecast of their projected energy bills. In addition to increasing energy efficiency between 2% to 4%, Energy Advisor software has proven to produce a 16% increase in customer satisfaction.

The Empower Platform is offered in the form of three tiered packages that make cost-effective digital engagement possible at the right level for every utility. The Energy Advisor and Energy Advisor Enterprise packages can either be integrated with customer billing for maximum precision or use energy consumption estimates informed by local rates, weather and typical home profiles. The Energy Envoy outbound-engagement package, which requires Energy Advisor Enterprise with billing integration, provides further opportunity for customizable customer outreach. Personalized video messaging, mid-cycle bill alerts, and energy summary reports, are all designed with a focus on measurably impacting customer satisfaction, program promotion, and engagement. Finally, to suit utilities pursuing an incremental approach to customer engagement, Apogee offers a selection of proactive communication tools as standalone products, including summary reports, customized energy calculators and videos.

“With Apogee’s extensive suite of offerings consolidated into a single, streamlined platform, it is now easier than ever for utilities to expand their digital engagement initiatives efficiently and cost-effectively,” says Susan Gilbert, Apogee president and CEO. “Our diverse utility clients using Empower Platform packages and standalone offerings enjoy greater program participation, significant lifts in customer satisfaction, and lowered costs from fewer field energy audits, meter rereads and bill inquiries—as well as loyalty-licensing that assures the price they pay never changes even as the applications’ capabilities continually expand.”

The newly released Empower Platform is being formally introduced at the AESP National Conference Feb. 13th through 16th in Orlando where hundreds of energy professionals gather to share the latest thinking and technologies with their peers. To learn more about the Empower Platform and to find the right package for your utility, visit apogee.net.

About Apogee Interactive

Apogee Interactive is one of the nation’s leading providers of customer engagement software services for US energy utilities. Partnering with utilities since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to residential and commercial customers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs, and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net. Follow us on Twitter at @apoweb and on Linkedin.

Contact: Karen Morris – 678-684-6801 – kmorris@apogee.net

New Version of PowerWise Bill Analyzer Streamlines Customers’ Search for Where Their Energy Dollars Are Going

ATLANTA, (Oct. 4, 2016) – Apogee Interactive announces that Nashville Electric Service (NES) has launched an upgraded version of the utility’s PowerWise Bill Analyzer tool to more than 320,000 residential customers. The application, based upon Apogee’s Energy Advisor offering, now includes a streamlined home energy assessment questionnaire that is optimized for mobile devices. Customers who complete the five-minute survey instantly receive a free report with dollarized recommendations for reducing household energy consumption, along with graphs and charts that provide visual, easy to understand breakdowns of monthly and annual use.

NES, a client since 2004, purchased Apogee’s online, self-service applications to help customers analyze their electric consumption and learn how to reduce their usage. Apogee’s tools also serve as a resource for NES call center representatives to more effectively manage high bill complaints over the phone. NES has experienced a noticeable increase in visitor traffic to the online tool since the launch of the upgraded PowerWise Bill Analyzer.

“We know that our customers are looking for more information about their bill and how they can save energy,” said Paula Geruntino, NES customer relations manager. “With the improvements to the bill analyzer, it is simple to use and the personalized results are easy to understand. It’s also extremely helpful for our service advisors when they need an in-depth breakdown of a customer’s usage to better explain their bill.”

With higher customer satisfaction and engagement from offerings such as the PowerWise Bill Analyzer, NES is expanding its use of Apogee solutions. The utility is currently undertaking a 4,000-customer pilot of Apogee’s Personalized Video Messaging product, which provides customized bill explanations in the form of short videos.

Available to utilities in a basic or enterprise package, Energy Advisor can be either integrated with customer billing or reflect energy consumption estimates informed by local rates, weather, and typical home profiles. To learn more about the new features offered in Energy Advisor, visit apogee.net.

About Apogee Interactive

Apogee Interactive is one of the nation’s leading providers of customer engagement software services for US energy utilities. Partnering with utilities since 1995, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs, and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net and follow us on Twitter at @apoweb.

About NES

Nashville Electric Service (NES) is one of the 12 largest public electric utilities in the nation, distributing energy to more than 370,000 customers in Middle Tennessee. For more information, visit nespower.com.

Contact: Karen Morris 678-684-6801 kmorris@apogee.net

Apogee Reinvents Online Customer Engagement
New Energy Advisor App Educates and Inspires Action

For Immediate Release:

ATLANTA, September 14, 2016 – Apogee Interactive today announced the launch of Energy Advisor, the latest release of its flagship home energy analysis application. This upgrade will soon be available to the millions of households Apogee serves through contracts with hundreds of US utilities.  This application analyzes customer’s energy use and provides personalized, actionable tips matched with relevant rebates and program offers for reducing usage and costs.

Available on utilities’ websites, in customer portals, and distributed to customers electronically, Energy Advisor is optimized for use on mobile devices. Customers begin by profiling their homes and habits in an interactive, game-like survey requiring less than a minute to complete. Upon completion, users see a report with specific recommendations for reducing their energy use including estimates of upfront cost, indication of difficulty level for implementing each measure along with “how to” explanations to help them get started. They can interact with graphical breakdowns of their monthly and annual use and even see a forecast of their projected energy bills.

“Our utility clients see significant lifts in customer satisfaction, expanded program participation, and fewer bill-inquiries resulting from use of our applications,” says Susan Gilbert, Apogee president and CEO.  “And customers want information relevant to their lives, therefore our tools deliver that as powerful, proactive messaging that drives program participation and cuts costs.”  She added, “While we are upgrading all of our utility clients to the new release, our loyalty-licensing assures prices will not change from what was originally contracted even though the application’s capabilities continually evolve.”

According to Jeff Conklin, who leads JD Power’s utility practice, just being aware of utility programs or participating in one boosts customer satisfaction by more than 10%, and a 2015 Accenture study documented that digitally engaged customers are 25 percent more satisfied with their energy provider than non-digital users. In addition to customer satisfaction lift, studies show that customers who use the Energy Advisor software see a 2% to 4% increase in energy efficiency.

With the Energy Advisor application in place, utilities can easily and cost-effectively expand their digital engagement initiatives. The proprietary AMES™ analytical engine powering the energy analysis provides accurate and consistent messaging. Many choose to deploy other proactive outbound communication tools offered as part of Apogee’s Empower platform, including personalized video messaging, mid-cycle bill alerts, and energy summary reports, all of which are proven to measurably increase customer satisfaction and engagement.

To learn more about the new features included in Energy Advisor, visit apogee.net.

About Apogee Interactive

Apogee Interactive is one of the nation’s leading providers of customer engagement software services for US energy utilities. Partnering with utilities since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to residential and commercial customers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs, and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net and follow us on Twitter at @apoweb.

Contact: Karen Morris – 678-684-6801 – kmorris@apogee.net

Union Power Cooperative Recognized for Most Innovative Use of Digital Communications by NRECA

For Immediate Release:

Atlanta, May 12, 2016

APOGEE Interactive, Inc. (apogee.net) a leading provider of digital engagement solutions for utilities announced today that Union Power Cooperative is the recipient of a National Rural Electric Cooperative Association Spotlight on Excellence award in the category of Most Innovative Digital Communications. The award recognizes exceptional communication and marketing practices among the nation’s energy cooperatives.

Union Power’s digital engagement strategy is powered by “My Energy Report,” Apogee’s outbound messaging platform designed to send participating members regular, personalized energy summary reports.  The summary reports include energy-use analysis, customized energy saving recommendations, and information on programs relevant to that member’s usage profile. The system also collects home profile data allowing Union Power to segment and target potential candidates for rebates and program offers.

Union Power’s My Energy Report program has achieved steady engagement among members with emails reaching unprecedented open rates of 50%. In addition, each enrollment counts towards North Carolina’s Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency credits, a goal set by the State to achieve 10% by 2018.

Union Power’s cutting-edge engagement strategy is two-fold as the outbound messaging platform drives traffic to more self-help tools located on Union Power’s website www.union-power.com and its Energy Center. Features of the Energy Center include Apogee’s calculators and weather application, highlighting the flagship home energy audit that provides custom recommendations to members on how to save. Members also have access to multiple specialty calculators that drill down into energy savings specifics such as space heaters, lighting, water heating, and heat pump cost comparisons. In addition, the weather application provides the current weather and its daily impact on energy costs giving visitors reason to return to the site throughout the billing cycle.

“Union Power is excited to be honored for this prestigious award and share our success story at the NRECA Connect Conference in Portland. Our presentation will reflect three years of data collected from our digital campaign and reveal our plans moving forward as we partner with Apogee to embrace more advanced forms of digital technology like personalized video bill explanation,” said Luanne Sherron, VP Communications and Key Accounts, Union Power Cooperative.

Cindy Smallwood, Account Manager, Apogee Interactive, confirmed, “Union Power Cooperative has paved the way for utilities by proving that personalized energy reports can be the catalyst for increased customer satisfaction. In addition, they have seen increased online engagement by as much as 300%.”

Apogee Interactive and Union Power will present the full case study, “Increasing Customer Engagement and Satisfaction with Digital Tools” at NRECA’s Connect 2016 conference in Portland, Oregon, May 10^th – 12^th. To learn more about Apogee’s digital engagement tools visit apogee.net or contact info@apogee.net or 678-684-6801.

About Apogee Interactive

Apogee Interactive is one of the nation’s leading providers of customer engagement software services for US energy utilities. Partnering with utilities since 1993, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs, and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net and follow us on Twitter at @apoweb.

About Union Power Cooperative

Union Power Cooperative is an electric distribution cooperative headquartered in Monroe, NC. The Cooperative serves more than 72,000 member accounts in Union, Stanly, Cabarrus, Mecklenburg and Rowan counties and has more than 130 employees. Incorporated in 1939, the Cooperative has over 5,800 miles of energized distribution and transmission lines, 23 substations and 3 breaker stations.

Contact Karen Morris | 678-684-6801 | info@apogee.net

Susan Gilbert and Utility Market Connections discus how Apogee’s digital engagement solutions are changing the way utilities communicate and serve customers.

Full Article

UMC: Digital engagement is changing the way utilities communicate and serve customers. What ways does Apogee initiate proactive and personalized communication through online engagements?

Susan Gilbert: When we formed the company, customers had to find our solutions on the utility company’s website.  Wanting to see more usage of our applications so they would deliver more value, we began working with our utility clients to push messaging to customers instead of hoping customers find it on the website.  Working with hundreds of utilities over many years has proven that pushing relevant information to customers drives usage of our applications.  Our first initiatives involved electronic newsletters.  We found they drove use of our applications by a factor of 10, which is quite significant.

We pioneered creative new ways of engaging customers.  Recently, we extended our messaging from just being relevant to a customer to being highly personalized.  American Express does this with their annual statements showing your spending by category.  We do the same for utilities with Energy Summary Reports sent annually, quarterly, seasonally, or monthly.  These statements contain the customer’s energy usage information disaggregated, just like the credit card summary does, but instead of being broken down by type of spending, our reports show energy-use by end-use system and by month.  That helps customers understand where their energy dollars are going and communicates that the company cares about them and is trying to provide useful information.  Because this analysis engine produces informative and engaging statements, it is now possible to place flags in the code to prompt certain tips to be presented when specific data patterns are observed.  For instance, a customer with a widening gap between what our analysis predicted they would use and their actual usage enables a tip suggesting something in the home has changed producing energy usage higher than the previous pattern predicts.  A progressively improving pattern can be rewarded with a “Congratulations, your efficiency seems to be improving.”

I must give Kroger credit for driving us harder to invent some of our solutions.  When I began receiving coupons from our local grocery store chain, I was surprised to see the coupons were precisely my weekly grocery list.  So, that’s what they are doing with the information they keep when they scan my Kroger card to get discounts.  That technique went in my mind from being creepy (what are they doing with this information?) to caring (regular items on my weekly shopping list FREE).

So, what results have these reports produced?  One client did an exhaustive study of sending customer’s e-mailed end of year summary reports and found a >15 percent bump in customer satisfaction between the treatment group and the control group.  That equates to about a 100 point increase on the JD Power thousand point scale.  This is quite significant by any measure.  And one of the most cost-effective and convenient techniques available.

Upon receiving our first online-video bill-explanation from our communication provider, we set out to find a way of delivering our bill explanations to customers with movies.  Finding the price point from others to be prohibitive for our utility clients to send millions of messages, we went to work creating a low cost platform to create movies at pennies a message.  That first project’s success lead to more movies.  Beat-the-Peak videos produced half a water-heater of load reduction.  Storm videos alerted customers to safety measures they needed to take in the chance of an outage associated with the inclement weather.  Capital Credits explanations followed and the uses continue to grow.  Personalized video messages are captivating and appreciated.  Utilities using them are achieving a 30 percent click-thru rate, ten times the average for messaging, and 99 percent of the surveyed customers reported they would like to continue receiving the messages.

As utilities strive to reach millennials, who in 5 years will make up one-third of the adult population, they are finding proactive, personalized, relevant messaging delivered through mobile media channels the most cost-effective approach to reaching them.

We moved on from electronic newsletters to summary reports to videos and are now tackling ways of using the most requested and popular information on the planet: the weather.  Our newly released Energy Forecaster predicts bills in the context of the weather.  These can be used to attract visitors to the utility website or pushed to customers’ mid-cycle bill alerting them of a coming high bill when there is still time to change it.  And to see how much they can change the bill, we offer a thermostat where you can move the temperature a degree or two or more to see the dollar savings available from that simple move.

UMC: What are your current clients biggest pain points? Which technological solution seems to make the biggest difference in solving those pain points?

Susan Gilbert: While each of our utilities’ issues are different and localized to their territory, business challenges, regulatory requirements, they all tend to share these: increase customer satisfaction, drive program participation, reduce costs and raise customer engagement.  Our applications are squarely locked on to solving these problems.  Personalized, proactive, engaging and cost-effective are the key to the growing acceptance of our applications.

UMC: In 2015, Navigant Research named Apogee a leading vendor of behavioral demand-side management (DSM) programs to energy utilities. How does DSM help utilities educate their customers on energy efficiency and what is the forecast for use of DSM programs in the energy market?

Susan Gilbert: We used to jokingly call DSM “Deceptive Strategic Marketing” because the dollars invested in some of the programs did indeed test the waters for greater use of electricity or beneficial electrification as it came to be known.  Today, DSM is localized in states where the legislature and regulators want to see load reduction, particularly before giving the green light to new power plant construction, and I don’t see that changing any time in the future.  Why approve new investment and costs when there is a lower cost way to use efficiency and/or DR?  In other words, don’t turn the water on harder to fill the leaky tub—fix the leak, then see what supply is needed, especially on a surgical basis.   Where DSM is being promoted, our utility clients find an educated customer is a better and more loyal customer.  They shift load when needed, they engage in programs, they stay with the utility even when there are other options.  Our applications are the most cost-effective method of creating behavior change through education. And education is persistent and bridges generations.

UMC: It was a big year last year for Apogee. Also in 2015, Apogee partnered with Comverge, the leading provider of demand management solutions for electric utilities. What does this mean for the future of Apogee and for the more than 650 US utilities that Apogee serves?

Susan Gilbert: Our business partnerships began 10 years ago with billing system providers where we needed to have customer’s billing information flow to our applications.  Customers were not going to sit and enter their 12-month billing history for electricity and gas, we could see that.  So the integration, while challenging in some instances due to security concerns, was the best way of mitigating risk and providing great service.  SEDC was our first, then SAP, Oracle, Harris and NISC and now most all the top billing systems are in some way integrated with our applications making it easy for new utility clients to activate our applications.   Finding that partnering worked well for us, we began teaming with other businesses in other areas, always focusing on the best-in-class providers of whatever service was offered.  Some field audit companies partner with us using our software to streamline field audits, we power pre-pay applications by refining the weather contribution to the coming bills, and we have found many companies interested in extending what they do to utilities by adding to our services.  Partnering will increasingly be important to our growing company and portfolio of offerings.

UMC: You rolled out a new product in 2014 – Apogee’s Energy Forecaster. With a full year under your belt, what has been the general reaction of utilities and their customers to Apogee’s weather forecasting and dollarizing-degree application on their websites?

Susan Gilbert: There is big WOW factor when people see with a click of a button how much they can save by moving the thermostat a single degree.  Most people don’t have any idea what a degree of comfort costs or could save them.  Even we in the industry seem to not know.  A question I commonly get at meetings and in auditor or CSR training sessions is “How much will it save to move the thermostat a few degrees?”   You get a range of answers, none of which are particularly helpful to customers.  “You’ll save 3% by lowering the setting by 3-4 degrees.”

Another WOW comes when people see what it costs each day to heat or cool their homes in the context of the weather.  People don’t think about that.  They think about a monthly bill of $100 or $300 or whatever.  But when they see the weather, then the cost and can see into the future extremely high bill days coming, they are more in control of their energy use and might change the thermostat that day.  We call it driving through the windshield instead of looking in the rearview mirror, which is what you are doing if all you get in your relationship with your energy provider is a monthly bill.  By the time you get the bill, it’s too late to do anything about it.

February 9, 2016 – Atlanta, GA – Apogee Interactive today announced that it is expanding its partnership program beyond offering integrated customer service solutions to providing analytical tool sets that will improve operations at North American utility companies.

The expanded program is expected to draw a significant number of new partner companies with solutions that can be integrated with and are complementary to those currently offered by Apogee directly to hundreds of US utilities. It is also sparking innovative, new offerings from current partner relationships including Advanced Control Systems (ACS), Comvergeand PayGo, among others.

“Today’s announcement is a major step in expanding our footprint as the industry’s leading supplier of energy analysis tools and customer engagement services,” says Jim Malcom, CFO, and EVP at Apogee Interactive. “Our partnership program allows us to extend far beyond our direct relationship with utilities, leveraging our proven analytical capabilities to enhance the services of leading providers of other utility solutions from energy management to demand response to pre-pay energy consumption. These combined offerings leverage our tools producing far greater benefits than these services can offer as stand-alone.”

Apogee is working closely with ACS to bring advanced energy use applications to utilities and their customers through an advanced mobile platform. ACS is combining its real-time energy management technology with Apogee’s unique energy forecaster to enable utilities to accurately model a specific consumer (load) and forecast what the impact will be on a per-feeder basis. This combination is unique in the industry and will change the way consumers plan, purchase and use energy.

In another example, the combination of Apogee’s customer targeting and messaging with Comverge’s IntelliSOURCE enables utilities to deploy demand-side management programs that deliver unmatched cost-effectiveness by targeting customers with high coincident peak loads and utilizing a single thermostat and engagement portal to drive both energy savings and peak reduction.

Apogee will provide PayGo with its energy and weather forecasting application that educates customers about the impact of weather on their energy consumption. Forecasted weather combined with historical billing data provides pre-pay energy consumers valuable insight into energy awareness and helps the utility better serve this segment of customers.

ACS (booth 1125), Comverge (booth 1811) and PayGo (booth 1935) are all exhibiting at DistribuTECH, February 9-11 in Orlando. Visit their booths to learn more about the partnership program, or contact Apogee directly at 678.684.6800 or info@apogee.net.

About Apogee Interactive
Apogee Interactive is one of the nation’s leading providers of customer engagement software services for US energy utilities. Partnering with utilities for more than 23 years, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net and follow us on Twitter at @apoweb.

Media Contact
Karen Morris
Apogee Interactive
678-684-6801
kmorris@apogee.net

February 3 – Atlanta, GA – Apogee Interactive announced today that it is expanding its Personalized Video Messaging solution among Old Dominion Electric Cooperative’s (ODEC’s) member distribution cooperatives after success with ODEC’S early adopters.

Starting in February 2016, Southside Electric Cooperative and Northern Neck Cooperative will join Rappahannock Electric Cooperative and Community Electric Cooperative in using this solution to promote energy efficiency. Using variable data technology to turn data from the customer information system (CIS) into video animations which can be emailed to members, Personalized Video Messaging explains the impact of weather, number of days in the month and other usage factors that may have prompted changes in the bill. By the end of 2016, Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative, Prince George Electric Cooperativeand BARC Electric Cooperative will begin using the solution to explain the customer bill, as well.

These cooperatives—along with A&N Electric Cooperative (ANEC), Choptank Electric Cooperative and Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative—can use Personalized Video Messaging to educate recipients on a variety of other topics including: capital credits, annual meetings, winter storms, prepaid metering and reducing energy consumption during peak usage, otherwise known as “Beat the Peak.” “Beat the Peak” is the video that Southside and Northern Neck executed during the summer of 2015 with tremendous success.

Email click-through rates for those using the solution reached an astonishing 30 percent, 26 percent higher than average email click through rate of four percent. Surveys administered by the cooperatives show that 95 percent of members find the videos easy to understand and 94 percent feel that they are useful.

As the person responsible for managing the energy efficiency and demand response programs for ODEC, Erin Puryear, manager of Member of Energy Innovation Planning, worked with its member-owner cooperatives to roll out the program. “Research from Experian found that open rates rose from seven percent to 13 percent when companies used the word ‘video’ in the email’s subject line. Another study from Marketo and Clearfit found that emails that used video for a direct call-to-action had a 53 percent higher click-to-open rate over emails without an obvious mention of video content,” said Puryear. “All of this said, the case for using video in email messages was compelling. The fact that the solution came from Apogee, a trusted partner that has worked with cooperatives for more than two decades, led us to choose this software for our member companies.”

Puryear and Greg Cook, vice president of administration and finance for Community Electric Cooperative will be presenting solution results at AESP National Conference, February 1 – February 4, in Phoenix. Their presentation: Wow’ing Customers with Personalized Videos for Bill Explanation and Demand Response, will be presented on Wednesday, February 3 from 3:15 PM – 4:15 PM.

Contact Apogee directly at 678.684.6800 or info@apogee.net if you are interested in learning more about the Personalized Video Messaging Solution.

About Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC)

Headquartered in Glen Allen, Va., ODEC is a not-for-profit, member-owned, power supply cooperative. It supplies reliable, cost-effective, environmentally balanced, wholesale power to its 11 member electric distribution cooperatives, which provide affordable electricity to 1.4 million people in 70 counties in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware. Learn more at www.odec.com

About Apogee Interactive
Apogee Interactive is one of the nation’s leading providers of customer engagement software services for US energy utilities. Partnering with utilities for more than 23 years, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net and follow them on Twitter at @apoweb.

Media Contact

Karen Morris

Apogee Interactive

678-684-6801

kmorris@apogee.net

Results will be presented at AESP’s 2016 National Conference

February 2, 2016 – Atlanta, GA – Apogee Interactive today announced that utility companies offering its online Energy Forecaster tool for estimating future energy bills are seeing a 40 percent increase in website traffic and the opportunity to boost customer satisfaction, as reported by JD Power in its 2015 Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study. According to the study, customers who received proactive communications averaged 58 points higher in customer satisfaction than those who received no communication from their utility.

Because energy usage is most influenced by weather patterns, Apogee’s tool – which is offered through an online application or IVR – overlays estimated energy costs with the weather forecast to provide an estimated power bill. The tool then enables utility customers to calculate differences in their bill by turning the thermostat up or down by a certain number of degrees.

Brian Jackson, who leads Apogee’s Digital Engagement initiatives, will share details about Energy Forecaster at the AESP National Conference, February 2 at 1:30 PM. During his presentation: Give Customers a Windshield, Not Just a Rear view Mirror,he will unveil what utilities are learning from having Energy Forecaster on their websites, many for more than a year.

“Sticker shock is one of the biggest issues facing utility customers – especially during the hot summer months when the bill is often twice as much as it is in the spring and fall,” says Jackson. “By allowing the utility customer to try out different thermostat settings and see how their bill will be impacted, they have the opportunity to make very conscious decisions about the cost of their comfort level.”

Contact Apogee directly at 678.684.6800 or info@apogee.net if you are interested in learning more about the tool including future enhancements.

About Apogee Interactive
Apogee Interactive is one of the nation’s leading providers of customer engagement software services for US energy utilities. Partnering with utilities for more than 23 years, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net and follow them on Twitter at @apoweb.

Media Contact
Karen Morris
Apogee Interactive
678-684-6801
kmorris@apogee.net

Navigant Research publishes Behavioral and Analytical Demand-Side Management report
ATLANTA, (Dec. 16, 2015) –Apogee Interactive has been named a leading vendor of behavioral demand-side management (DSM) programs to energy utilities, according to Navigant Research’s recent report, Behavioral and Analytical Demand-Side Management.
Navigant Research, a market research and consulting firm that provides analysis of global clean technology markets, defines behavioral DSM as utilizing “behavioral sciences and data analytics to engage customers and promote energy saving actions that can reduce load, encourage more efficient energy use, foster program participation, and reduce energy bills.”
Apogee was among the first companies to develop sophisticated algorithms to analyze utility customer energy use online and offer tailored energy saving recommendations, explain customers’ energy bills in detail, and promote utility energy efficiency programs — at the dawn of Internet use in the early ’90s.
“We started the company 23 years ago using digital technology to help utilities educate their customers on energy efficiency,” said Susan Gilbert, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of Apogee. “Today Apogee provides a complete digital engagement platform that communicates personalized information to each utility customer regarding their energy use, what’s driving any changes in their monthly energy bills, and how they can start saving on energy costs immediately,” she explained. “Our platform leverages the timeliness and convenience of multiple communications channels including texts, personalized video messaging through email, IVR and self-service tools on the utility’s website.”
Navigant Research’s Behavioral and Analytical Demand-Side Management report assesses the market drivers, technology trends, competitive landscape, and global market forecasts in the expanding field of DSM, and profiles Apogee as one of three leading behavioral DSM vendors.
“Behavioral DSM methods have recently emerged as discovering and promoting energy savings tools with the potential to reduce costs for energy consumers,” says Paige Leuschner, report author and research associate with Navigant Research. “In addition to being a tool for energy savings, utilities are also using DSM as a means for expanding solution offerings and enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction.”
“It’s always been about helping utilities help their customers,” Gilbert said. “The more consumers understand their energy use and participate in the utility’s programs, the more they can take control of their energy costs and the more satisfied they become with their energy provider. Digital technologies today allow us to engage consumers faster, more effectively, reduce operating costs, and achieve a better result for all,” Gilbert said.

About Apogee Interactive Inc.
Apogee Interactive is one of the nation’s leading providers of customer engagement software services for US energy utilities. Partnering with utilities for over 23 years, Apogee’s digital engagement platform delivers proactive, personalized communication to consumers nationwide. Apogee’s proven SaaS platform enables more meaningful customer engagement, proven sustainable energy results, reduced operating costs and improved program performance for utilities. For more information, please visit apogee.net and follow us on Twitter at @apoweb.

About Navigant Research
Navigant Research, the dedicated research arm of Navigant, provides market research and benchmarking services for rapidly changing and often highly regulated industries. In the energy sector, Navigant Research focuses on in-depth analysis and reporting about global clean technology markets. The team’s research methodology combines supply-side industry analysis, end-user primary research and demand assessment, and deep examination of technology trends to provide a comprehensive view of the Energy Technologies, Utility Transformations, Transportation Efficiencies, and Buildings Innovations sectors. Additional information about Navigant Research can be found at www.navigantresearch.com.

Media Contacts:

Karen Morris, Apogee Interactive, 678-684-6801, kmorris@apogee.net
Lindsay Lorenz, Navigant Research, 303-493-5477, lindsay.lorenz@navigant.com