AEP redesigns its bills to help consumers find what’s important
This month, your American Electric Power bill is going to look a little different. It’s larger, it’s in color, and it has been retooled to do a better job of conveying difficult-to-understand concepts.
This is the Columbusbased utility’s first major redesign of its bill in decades.
Consumers have yet to weigh in on its success, so The Dispatch asked Josh Bodman, chairman of advertising and graphic design at the Columbus College of Art & Design, for an expert assessment.
“I see a lot of great ideas and designs that are in the new bill,” he said. “The biggest (change) is a hierarchy and contrast.”
When he says “hierarchy,” he means that a few elements stand out, as opposed to a muddle of competing information.
AEP officials say the old design had been around for as long as anyone can remember.
The changes are happening in part because of recent customer surveys showing that people couldn’t understand their
bill, said Katie Grayem, AEP Ohio’s director of customer experience and communications.
“Our goal was really to respond to our customer feedback and have a bill that’s easier to read, and easier to find important components,” she said.
Just because the previous design was used for so long doesn’t mean people liked it. Over the years, it did get a few minor updates, but that often meant only adding fine print as opposed to simplifying the messages.
One reason for the lack of prior changes is that the bill format needs to be approved by state regulators in most of the company’s 11-state territory. Much of the fine print is required to be there.
In recent years, the company could look to plenty of examples of other energy and utility companies that have improved the readability of their bills.
At the Gahanna offices of AEP Ohio, one of the metal walls is covered with examples of bills from other companies, such as Commonwealth Edison, a Illinois electricity utility; Eversource Energy, a utility in New England; and Power2Switch, a Chicagobased company that helps customers select alternative electricity suppliers.
The AEP design uses an element that was popularized by Power2Switch about five years ago. It’s a doughnut-shaped graphic that shows the breakdown of costs between delivery charges and what AEP calls supplier charges.
The supplier charge, also called “generation service,” is the portion of the bill that reflects whether the customer has chosen an alternative provider or automatically received a standard rate from AEP.
“Pictures are remembered better than words, so we went with a few icons and charts,” said Seyi Fabode of Power2Switch in a 2012 story on Co.Design, a website associated with Fast Company magazine.
AEP prints and mails its bills from a print shop in Canton, sending them to customers throughout the multi-state territory. Of 5.4 million customers who receive a bill, roughly 70 percent get it on paper through the mail, and 30 percent have signed up for e- billing.
The company is changing the design while maintaining the fine print that was in the previous format. AEP does this by adding a second page: The cover page has basic information, and the second page goes into details.
Meanwhile, the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel says the new bill is a clear improvement. The office has long said that the complexity of utility rates and bills is a barrier to customers understanding how to look out for their interests.
“AEP is doing a good thing for consumers by making its electric bill more understandable,” said Molly McGuire, spokeswoman for the consumer advocate.
“Consumers should pay particular attention on their bills to AEP’s ‘ price to compare’ for generation service. The price to compare, also known as the ‘standard offer,’ can be a conservative choice for consumers to save money on electricity.”