The Science of Collections: How PG&E Uses Behavioral Science

About This Presentation

With 16 million gas and electric customers in California, over 1 million past-due accounts, and a 3.5% disconnection cap, PG&E needed a collections solution that could manage the complexity of 13 different programs while meeting strict regulatory requirements. In this session, PG&E and Symend share how they partnered to transform collections using behavioral science — evolving from 3 messages to 260 unique behaviorally-optimized messages and delivering approximately $30 of value per account.

Speakers

Rakesh Nigam

Senior Director, Credit Policy & Revenue Operations

PG&E

Ishita Moghe, MSc

Sr. Behavioral Scientist & Leader of Strategy & Applied Science

Symend

Mark Brown

Vice President of Sales

Symend

Topics Covered

• PG&E's collections challenges: regulatory constraints, legacy systems, and rising consumer financial stress
• Solution requirements: segmented engagement, compliance-first, no increase in call center volume
• Behavioral science tactics: loss aversion, urgency, empathy, mental accounting, and more
• 90-day implementation: discovery, configuration, go-live, and cross-team collaboration
• Designing programs across early-stage, late-stage, payment arrangements, AMP, and budget billing
• Overcoming data complexity: consolidating 8 daily files across multiple teams
• Results: payment insights by customer archetype and ROI metrics
• Lessons learned: flexibility, deep discovery, strong PM, and compliance-first approach