8/10/2019 DeKalb County Water Billing Presentation
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Water Sewer Billing UpdatePresentation by DeKalb Department of Finance
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8/10/2019 DeKalb County Water Billing Presentation
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* Issues
*
Call Center Staffing
* Moratorium & Audit
*
Consumption Reports
* Veolia
* Initiatives
*
Satellite Locations
*
Automated Payment Line
*
Communication Campaign
* Next Steps
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Agenda
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* 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
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*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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Call Center Staffing: CST performance dashboardswere created, a critical first step to building an effective call center
management system
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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
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Call Center Staffing: Additional metrics tracking,and goal-setting must be incorporated into call center management
practices
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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
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*
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
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*
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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Consumption Graph (sample)
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* 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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* 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
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*
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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* 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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* 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
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*
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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*
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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Questions
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