Golden State Water Uses Genasys Protect

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In this video, Regina Cullado explains how Golden State Water uses Genasys Protect to improve customer communications, support payment outreach, and manage planned or ad hoc notifications.

Customer Testimonial Summary

Golden State Water uses Genasys Protect to send targeted utility customer notifications for payment reminders, payment-plan outreach, assistance-program promotion, and emergency or non-emergency alerts. In this customer testimonial, Regina Cullado, Customer Support Manager at Golden State Water Company, explains how the platform helps her team reach the right customers, send timely messages, and measure campaign performance.

One of the strongest examples is Golden State Water’s last-chance payment alert campaign. Cullado says the utility saw about a 63% payment response from weekly alerts sent to customers who were scheduled for service shutoff, not counting customers who called to request payment plans. The same platform also helps the team promote water-bill assistance events, review delivery analytics, clean up customer contact data, and manage planned or ad hoc customer communications with limited internal IT involvement.

In the interview, Regina Cullado refers to GEM, formerly Genasys Emergency Management. Genasys ALERT and GEM’s alerting capabilities are now part of Genasys Protect, Genasys’ current solution for targeted emergency and non-emergency communications.

What Golden State Water Uses Genasys Protect For

Golden State Water uses Genasys Protect to support customer communications before, during, and after important service-related events. The utility uses the platform for:

Last-chance payment reminders
Payment-plan outreach
Water-bill assistance promotion
Planned customer notifications
Ad hoc messages
Emergency alerts
Delivery analytics and contact-data cleanup

For utility teams, the value is not just sending a message. It is reaching a specific customer group with relevant information, confirming the audience before launch, reviewing delivery results after the alert, and using that information to improve future outreach.

Payment Alerts That Drove Customer Action

Golden State Water uses Genasys Protect to notify customers who are scheduled for service shutoff. The message gives customers a final reminder that they still have time to act and includes links to payment options or payment-plan requests.

Cullado says the team sent these alerts weekly and saw about a 63% payment response. She also notes that this figure did not include customers who called to ask about payment plans, which means the alerts likely drove additional customer engagement beyond direct payments.

For utilities, this is a practical example of how targeted communications can reduce missed notices, give customers another chance to respond, and support customer service teams before an account issue becomes more serious.

Assistance Outreach Beyond Emergency Alerts

Golden State Water also uses Genasys Protect to promote customer-assistance programs. Cullado gives the example of an event at the L.A. Convention Center where low-income customers could schedule an appointment and complete an application for water-bill payment assistance.

That use case matters because utility communication is not limited to emergencies. Customers may need timely information about payment assistance, planned work, conservation programs, service updates, or account actions. Genasys Protect gives utilities a way to reach defined customer groups without relying only on mailed notices, website updates, or call-center interactions.

Templates, Targeting, and Delivery Analytics

Cullado emphasizes how easy it is to set up a message template and launch an alert. Before sending, the platform also gives the team a quality-control step so staff can confirm they are targeting the right customers.

That matters for utility communications. Sending a billing notice, shutoff warning, or assistance-program message to the wrong audience creates confusion and extra calls. Sending it to the right audience gives customers clearer information and helps staff avoid unnecessary follow-up work.

After each alert, Golden State Water can review delivery analytics to see which communications were not delivered. Cullado says this helps the team identify where customer information needs to be cleaned up before the next campaign.

The workflow is simple but valuable: build the template, confirm the target list, send the message, review delivery results, and improve customer records.

Implementation with Limited IT Involvement

Cullado says Golden State Water implemented the system without requiring heavy internal IT involvement. During rollout, the project team explained the system features, demonstrated the platform, and discussed how the customer master list should be set up.

The implementation also involved coordination with Golden State Water’s customer support portal and MyGS Water customer account portal provider. Golden State Water planned to use the MyGS Water portal as the interface where customers could indicate communication preferences, then upload those preferences into Genasys Protect.

Why This Matters for Utilities

Utility customer communications often depend on speed, accuracy, and trust. Customers need to know when action is required. Staff need confidence that the right audience received the right message. Leadership needs visibility into whether outreach worked.

Golden State Water’s experience shows how Genasys Protect can support that full process. The platform helps utilities send targeted messages, promote customer assistance, reduce manual outreach, review undelivered communications, and improve customer data over time.

Questions Answered in the Video

How does Golden State Water use Genasys Protect?

Golden State Water uses Genasys Protect for targeted customer communications, including payment reminders, payment-plan outreach, assistance-program promotion, planned notifications, ad hoc messages, and emergency alerts.

What result did Golden State Water see from payment alerts?

Regina Cullado says Golden State Water saw about a 63% payment response from weekly last-chance payment alerts sent to customers scheduled for service shutoff. That figure did not include customers who called to ask about payment plans.

Can utilities use Genasys Protect beyond emergency alerts?

Yes. Golden State Water’s testimonial shows Genasys Protect supporting routine utility operations, customer service outreach, billing communications, assistance-program promotion, and emergency notifications.

Customer Quotes

“We sent them a last-chance alert to pay saying, hey, you’re scheduled to be turned off, but you still have time to pay. I think we saw 63% response in either payments or in payments alone, not even counting the times that they called to ask for a payment plan.”
“It’s just so easy to set up a template, launch, and also it allows us to do some quality control to make sure that we do have the right targets.”
“After you send the alert, it provides you some analytics as to what communication was not delivered, so we’re able to look at that and see where we need to clean up our customers’ information.”

About the Speaker

Regina Cullado is the Customer Support Manager at Golden State Water Company. In this testimonial, she speaks from the customer-service and utility-operations perspective, focusing on how targeted communications help Golden State Water reach customers before shutoff, promote assistance programs, and improve contact-data quality.

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Contact Genasys to learn how Genasys Protect helps utilities send targeted customer notifications, support assistance outreach, and improve visibility into message delivery.

Full Transcript

The following transcript is provided for accessibility and search visibility. It has been lightly edited for clarity.

How do you Genasys Protect at Golden State Water?

We utilize the Genasys Protect to send alerts to customers who were scheduled to be turned off. And we sent them a last chance alert to pay saying, hey, you’re scheduled to be turned off, but you still have time to pay. Here’s a link to the payment option, or here’s a link to a request for a payment plan.

So again, when we sent those alerts each campaign that we did every week, I think we saw 63% response in either payments or in payments alone, not even counting the times that they called to ask for a payment plan. We are able to utilize the Genasys Protect to promote, for example, an event that they’re going to have in July that will enable low-income customers to schedule an appointment on-site at the L.A. Convention Center so that they can complete their application for water payment assistance or water bill payment assistance.

What has your experience been using Genasys Protect?

It’s just so easy to set up a template, launch, and also it allows us to, before we actually launch an alert, it allows us to do some quality control to make sure that we do have the right targets.

And after you send the alert, it provides you some analytics as to what communication was not delivered, so we’re able to look at that and see where we need to clean up our customers’ information. For me, I found it to be an effective tool in order to execute, whether it’s ad hoc or planned communication to our customers.

What typically happens after you send out a message?

For example, when we send out the alerts for customers who are in danger of turning off, and we’re able to track how effective was the message by the number of payments that we receive about two to three days immediately after the alert is launched.

What was it like setting up the system?

I’m smiling because we’ve been able to implement the Genasys Protect without engaging a lot of our internal IT resources. When we launched the project, we met with the project team. They explained the features of the system to us, a demo, and we had a conversation about how the master list or the customer master list should be set up, what kind of customization and custom fields needed to be set up. They also worked with our other technology partners, like our customer support portal and the MyGS Water customer account portal provider, because we were going to use the MyGS Water customer account portal as an interface for our customers to indicate their preferences, and we were going to upload the preferences into the Genasys Protect.

What would you say to other companies considering Genasys Protect?

Genasys Protect is a tool that they should really take a look at, because of the ability to send emergency and non-emergency alerts, I think, like I said previously, the return on the investment is expanded so many more times because you’re not only getting a system that allows you to send emergency alerts, but now you’re able to provide quick, low-cost and powerful communication to your customers that will be helpful to them.