Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas)

The Client

Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) is USA’s largest natural gas distribution utility delivering clean, safe and reliable energy to 21.8 million consumers throughout central and southern California. As part of the public service landscape, SoCalGas has evolved over the years, emerging as a leader in creating a responsible and sustainable energy economy, pioneering new ways to secure a greener future for customers. 

The Situation

As opposed to traditional utilities, SoCalGas’s focus has always transcended from mere delivery to continuously improving customer experience. In turn, the company has prioritized digital experiences over physical infrastructure to meet consumer expectations of today. Keeping in line with its vision and the rapidly evolving digital demands of the consumer, SoCalGas wanted to future-proof its digital needs and build a robust, scalable and user-friendly digital experience.

The Challenge

In the age of increasing digital consumption, customers expect information to be instant and seamlessly available. As the primary suppliers of gas in a significantly large locale, SoCalGas's website had to be up and running at all times for users to stay updated on service schedules and account details, and also pave avenues for new business. The previous website was powered by legacy systems like Oracle Web Center Sites (OWCS) and TeamSite 6.7, and the dependency on unsupported systems created an unstable environment that resulted in downtime and performance issues. 

Additionally, the internal content team lacked flexibility in updating and publishing web content, as well as expanding and upgrading the site without technical help. Site maintenance was becoming difficult with severe troubleshooting and budgetary challenges due to dependency on specialized technical expertise for the outdated servers.

The Solution

Partnering with Moonraft Innovation Labs, a UST Global Company, SoCalGas revamped its digital experience by migrating from its existing content management system to Drupal and the more robust and powerful Acquia Cloud Platform. This not only helped in increasing reliability and reducing dependencies, but also brought more flexibility in content authoring. The digital strategy aimed to build a consistent and comprehensive digital experience with uninterrupted service mirroring SoCalGas's brand voice in providing a reliable, constant and sustainable source of energy. 

The project was approached with a three-phase execution plan including content migration, experience design and content analysis. 

The Results

Leveraging Acquia Cloud Platform's powerful tools, SoCalGas achieved a seamless transition enabling a smooth content update process while mitigating technical dependencies. Since the completion of the project, SoCalGas has been able to focus more on developing and enhancing the website rather than maintaining the servers to keep the website up and running, saving both time and money. Consumers now have access to a website with fewer issues, more functionalities and more updated content. 

Specific metrics include:

• 18% increase in new users
• 79% drop in bouncerate
• 304% increase in the average session durations 
• Average page loads are now 52% faster
• Average page downloads are now 65% faster