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Marietta utility reports increased digital payments, outlines customer service technology
Summary
Marietta Board of Lights and Water staff presented technology and customer-service metrics, saying digital payments and outreach have increased and describing systems used for billing, outage management and meter reading.
Sherry Rashad, a staff member presenting the strategic-business-plan deliverables 9A and 9B, told the Marietta Board of Lights and Water that the utility’s customer-service technology is being used more frequently and that several systems support billing, outage management and customer communications.
Rashad said the utility uses Central Square Technologies for billing and outage management, Selectron for the interactive voice response system (IVR), and Click2Gov for online services. "We have right now 47,000 a little bit over 47,000 active customers," Rashad said. She said the billing system ties into multiple applications including credit-scoring through Equifax, payment processing and a charity portal used by assistance agencies.
Rashad pointed to year-over-year increases in several customer-contact metrics as evidence the technology is being used: phone payments handled through the IVR rose from an average of about 3,100 to about 3,200 per month, representing “a little over half million dollars” collected by phone in the period she cited. Opt-ins for text messaging increased from about 80 customers per month last year to 131 this year. Outbound delinquency calls rose from about 2,600 to 3,300; emails to customers increased from about 2,100 to 2,250.
On collections and disconnections, Rashad said the system places a notice on bills only when an account is past due and staff also sends automated IVR calls and emails warning customers that service is about to be disconnected. A board member said they had not received notifications; Rashad said she would look into that specific case.
Rashad described meter-reading operations as primarily using a Tamless (drive-by) system with a roughly "99 [percent] accuracy rate," supplemented by mobile collectors and manual reads where communications fail. She said all meters have endpoints and that the mail and copy center handles bill postage via Quadient and ZIP Plus4 services.
The presentation concluded with Rashad saying staff will continue to expand self-service options for customers; she offered to provide a breakdown of the 47,000 active customers by service type (electric, water, sanitation) to board members on request.
Board members asked follow-up questions about the mix of electric and water accounts and about individual notification failures; Rashad said she would provide more detailed splits and follow up on specific customer reports. The board did not take formal action on the technology presentation.
