Piedmont EMC (News - Alert), a member-owned electric cooperative serving customers in six counties of North Carolina near Raleigh-Durham, has tapped TextPower for its "Beat the Peak" program.

The program provides instant alerts to member customers prior to predicted heavy usage periods and encourages shutting off unnecessary lights and adjusting thermostats during these times of peak usage.

Piedmont Electric selected TextPower due to its growing reputation for quality service in the utility industry and its integration with Piedmont's IVR system.

"Piedmont EMC's focus on lowering our wholesale power costs resulted in finding a text messaging service to support our Beat the Peak voluntary program. The text messaging service needed to depict a professional product, not infringe upon our members privacy, be cost effective and easily implemented by our employees," said Richard Mabbott, chief operating officer, Piedmont, in a statement.

Mabbott said that TextPower was able to meet these objectives and they continue to provide excellent customer service for their product.

"We're honored that Piedmont EMC chose us to provide text messaging to their members in order to reduce peak usage in real-time," said Mark Nielsen, co-founder and executive chairman, TextPower.

"By integrating our text messaging platform with their Milsoft IVR system, Piedmont is able to easily reach their customers immediately, while significantly improving customer service and reducing their power costs," said Nielsen.

Officials with TextPower said that TextPower is helping cooperatives like Piedmont to significantly upgrade their customer service and communication through the ability to receive and send immediate text messages about such things as outages, load shedding alerts, delinquencies, appointment scheduling, and other services using the company’s SmartAlert text service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Company officials said that TextPower integrates with an organization's back-office systems to create event-triggered alerts that let senior management decide the criteria so that when something happens or reaches a predetermined threshold, alerts are automatically sent to a mobile or group of cell phones, advising them of the occurrence.