When in reality, you’re buying it from EXELON.

EXELON is one of those wonderful things that happened after Utility Deregulation in the 90’s.
You can read more about it here… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exelon

Anyway, its a big corporate whore. Much like all the other large corporate whores out there.

But I digress.
As I was saying, if you live in South Eastern PA, you use PECO.
So paying your bill is just one of those things you do every month.
99% of my bill paying is done via the web, and I know I’m not alone in this, so I have to ask my self… “Why is it so hard to build a decent bill payment process on your website?”

Paying your bill online with PECO involves using one of the most jumbled interfaces I’ve seen in a while. First it takes you like 3 clicks to find it. Its not easily found off of the home page, and its hosted and run by a 3rd party. So you’re actually leaving the EXELON/PECO website to do it.

The form fields are badly organized, labeled poorly, and over all just a pain to use.

Being overly helpful, I wrote PECO via their suggestion form.
Just a simple… “Hey, It would be nice if you guys had a nice system with which I could pay my bill online, k thx, here’s some suggestions….” (to paraphrase).

Here in, I will republish the ENTIRETY of the response I received. (4 days after I sent it).

Dear Mr Goodyear

If you are have difficulties getting access to the online services. We may suggest, selecting the Need Help option online.

*blink*
*blink*

Allow me to parse this, from my eyes.
1. they read my email, and maybe that person understood what I was talking about, but they OBVIOUSLY don’t have a way of sending that on to a level of operations that can process it.

Fail.

2. They don’t have a way to respond to it, from their web team….

Fail

3. They suggest I go to a part of their website, but not only fail to provide a direct link, they also fail to explain step by step how to reach it… So that *IF* I was having a problem using their website, I am now extra lost cause I may not even know how to get to that part of the website.

Fail.

I have no illusions that the CEO of PECO/EXELON is reading this. and its hardly the end of the road. But come on.

Hire a real web team that understands customer needs and satisfaction. Who has done more then just built a website in their basement cause they’re uncle paid them $50 bucks to do it.

Hire a team that understands that the ease of use means an increase in customer satisfaction and that you’ll probably end up making money by reducing customer service calls…

I don’t know. That whole internet thing must be a fad anyway, so who cares what I have to say…