We strive to be readily accessible when customers need us to answer questions, respond to outages or provide service assistance. In 2008, AEP's call centers received more than 18 million customer calls — a 5 percent increase over the total number received in 2007. We attribute this increase to more hurricanes and ice storms and an increase in credit-related calls due to the recession. In addition to these 18 million calls, 750,000 online self-service transactions were completed on our company Web sites — double the amount completed online in 2007. Those who did call in waited an average of 47 seconds to speak to an AEP employee. According to our surveys, customer satisfaction improved across the AEP system, in all customer segments, from 83.5 percent in 2007 to 84.6 percent in 2008, putting us in the top quartile for performance benchmarks nationally.

In January 2009, JD Power and Associates' Electric Utility Business Customer Satisfaction Study named Appalachian Power the third-highest ranking utility in the eastern United States for customer satisfaction among business customers. The company scored high for its proactive communications with customers; other measurements included power quality and reliability, billing and payment, corporate citizenship, price and customer service.

AEP recognizes the tremendous burden the recession is having on our customers' ability to pay for basic needs, including electricity. In 2008, we had a 7 percent increase in our delinquent residential customer account balances and a more than 6 percent increase in delinquent nonresidential account balances. This reflects the financial strain customers are experiencing. We understand these hardships and recognize our responsibility to work one-on-one with customers to provide a range of payment options and payment assistance.

AEP maintains relationships with all federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Programs (LIHEAP) to assist eligible low-income and other vulnerable customers in paying heating and cooling bills. We work to make sure that LIHEAP assistance dollars are credited to customers' accounts on a timely basis and provide information on our company Web sites about payment assistance, including a link to LIHEAP. Some of our companies also have company-sponsored "fuel funds" that are generally funded through a combination of company and customer contributions and provide low-income payment assistance. In 2008, we contributed nearly $300,000 and received in excess of $45 million from various government and private agencies for residential customer bill payment assistance, 8.6 percent more than in 2007.