DeKalb County Water Billing Presentation

8/10/2019 DeKalb County Water Billing Presentation

1/18

Water Sewer Billing UpdatePresentation by DeKalb Department of Finance

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1


2/18

* Issues

*

Call Center Staffing

* Moratorium & Audit

*

Consumption Reports

* Veolia

* Initiatives

*

Satellite Locations

*

Automated Payment Line

*

Communication Campaign

* Next Steps

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Agenda

2


3/18

* Customer phone calls not answered at call center

* Long Wait/Hold Times

*

Dropped Calls

* Maloof Water Payment Center experiencing highvolume and congested wait areas

* Customer complaints regarding high water bills

*

Customer desire for additional information from DeKalbCounty concerning billing process, consumption, leaks

and billing errors

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Issues

3


4/18

*Addition of the Hire Dynamics staff has increased thefull-time call center staff from 20 to 55 people

*

New service level agreements have been implementedto manage calls requiring additional handling orresearch

* In-depth training for the Hire Dynamics staff is ongoing,

with one class currently in-session and scheduled toconclude no later than December 31. Additional trainingwill significantly improve the customer serviceexperience by enabling the new staff to provide morefirst-call resolutions

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Call Center Staffing

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5/18

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Call Center Staffing: CST performance dashboardswere created, a critical first step to building an effective call center

management system

5

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These two

indicators should

trend similarly but

are divergent Reasons for

divergence calls

for more research:

Ineffective

resource

mgmt;

Outside

interference

affecting call

center ops

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000ABN Rate# Calls Abandonment Rate and Call

Volumes

Total

Calls

ABN

Rate


6/18

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Call Center Staffing: Additional metrics tracking,and goal-setting must be incorporated into call center management

practices

6

$,$'89):8;'

In Oct, due to the

increase of staff,

phone were

answered quickly

causing a rise in

SL

Subsequently, the

ASA decreased

because therewere more staff

answering

phones

Evidence of

immediate impact

of staff increase


7/18

*

On September 30, 2014 DeKalb County instituted a temporarymoratorium on water disconnections, which ended on October 15,2014

*

5,640 DeKalb County residents were identified with recent bills totallytwice their normal averages or greater

*

As of December 1, 2014, 93% (5,250) accounts audited and sourceof variance identified

*

All accounts to be resolved by December 15, 2014 and all affectedaccounts will receive letters about their account and next steps

*

Variances in water sewer bill can have a variety of root causes,including increased consumer consumption, undetected leaks,irrigation usage, inaccurate meter reading and estimated bills.

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Moratorium & Audit

7


8/18

*

Sent to all Individual Customer Accounts (commercialand residential)

*

Commercial- Monthly Billing* Residential Varies (monthly and bimonthly)

* Contain a history of water sewer consumption and costin DeKalb County

*

Personal usage comparative from April 2013 throughSeptember 2014

* Will be added to monthly and bi-monthly bills 1QTR2015

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Consumption Reports

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9/18

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10/18

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Consumption Graph (sample)

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11/18

* Veolia, a globally-recognized in water services, engaged withthe customer service group the week of November 3

* Veolia will present monthly milestone metrics to the steeringcommittee and the Board of Commissioners

*

The tasks of the Veolia team include*

Redesign the currently-used Interactive Voice Response system(IVR) to reduce call durations and improve self-serve options

*

Work with IT and the billing software vendor to improve thatsystems response time

*

Spearhead the invoice redesign and internal bill image access* Two integrated Veolia team members interact daily with the

customer service group and provide real-time coaching andrecommendations for improved operations.

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Onboarding Veolia

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12/18

* 60 Satellite Payment Locations.

*

Payment sites at local Kroger, Citgo, Walmart and

other retail locations are set up around the county

to provide easy bill payment options for customers.

*A map and list of these locations can be found on

the DeKalb County Watershed website:http://www.dekalbwatershed.com/payyourbill.html

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Initiative: Satellite Locations

12


13/18

*

Town Hall Presentations.

* In addition to the seminars at the Neighborhood Summit

on November 1, various DeKalb County commissionershave invited the Department of Finance to present onthe improvements to the water billing process

* Feedback from the town hall meetings and

Neighborhood Summit shows residents are receptive tothe new satellite payment locations and haveexperienced an improvement in customer service

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Initiative: Communication

Campaign

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14/18

* Other Communications.

*

Significant communications strategy has been underwayto complement operations. Including:

* Updated list of customer frequently-asked questions

* Proactively issuing a press release, detailing

improvements to-date, as well as a forward-looking plan ofaction for county residents

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Initiative: Communication

Campaign

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15/18

* Continued in-depth training and development

*

Third Fully trained CSR class completed by February28th, 2015

*

Development of First Call Resolution

*

Establishing Performance Metrics for CSRs

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Next Steps: Staffing

15


16/18

*

Satellite Location Communication Campaign*

Signage in recreational centers, libraries and Walmart

*

DeKalb County Bill Redesign* Communications team plans to issue a follow-up press

release(s), including any and all customer service andefficiency improvements/successes

*

Continued Customer Outreach and Education*

Website Updates

*

Water Conservation

*

Leak Detection

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Next Steps: Communication

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17/18

*

Analysis of Water Billing Customer Service Hours ofOperations

*

Technology Integration

* Reduce repetitive Monthly/Bi-Monthly Bill Estimates

* Quality Control of full billing cycle

* Meter reading

*

System Upload

* Billing Audit

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Next Steps: Operations

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18/18

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Questions

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DeKalb County Water Billing Presentation

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