How SoCalGas Modernized with Choice Digital

Posted By: EN Todayon: March 04, 2024In: General Energy News, Oil & Gas News

SoCalGas switched to Choice Digital to modernize its rebate disbursements.

Southern California Gas Company is on a mission. The gas distribution utility is the nation’s largest, with more than 21 million consumers served across 500 communities and 6 million meters. SoCalGas is using that successful base to build upon their mission to be the cleanest, safest, most innovative energy infrastructure company in America.
There’s no shortage of forward-thinking within SoCalGas’s energy efficiency and customer experience teams. When SoCalGas took a look at its rebate disbursement approach, it saw another opportunity for innovation. SoCalGas was still using paper checks to send out rebate payments to customers that participated in their wide array of innovative energy efficiency programs.

What’s so bad about putting a check in the mail? Well, for one thing, Americans just don’t use checks anymore. Checks haven’t changed much since the 1970s, and they’ve been on a long decline since their peak in 1995. Here in 2024, one study found that almost half of Americans have not written a single check in the last year. Handing out checks by mail to modern customers is slow, printing and signing them is expensive in time and materials. After all that, when the checks finally arrive, most people see them as an inconvenience instead of a welcome payment.
For companies like SoCalGas, a paper-check disbursement program also represents a large escheatment liability. All of those paper checks out in the mail system, getting lost, going unopened, and remaining uncashed, are just sitting on the books. In addition to providing a better experience for its customers, SoCalGas needed a better way of getting payments directly to customers.

In the end, SoCalGas decided to go with Choice Digital. Choice Digital is a payment disbursements solution that offers modern options like digital and physical prepaid cards—and paper checks are still an option for customers that prefer that. SoCalGas picked Choice Digital because it was the best approach for its customers, with modern support, lots of payment options, and the flexibility to properly take care of every customer.
Through Choice Digital’s solution, SoCalGas now digitally engages their customers with a variety of payment options leveraging their branded, easy-to-use portal. Customers can choose their own preferred method of payment. Choice Digital is easy to work with, flexible, and they have an experienced support team that can help SoCalGas with its specific needs. Through this portal, SoCalGas gets full visibility and transparency for all of the money going out to customers—including 100% deliverability, which would be impossible with paper checks alone.