Empowering Customer Self-Reliance in Vancouver, Washington

When serving 75,000 water utility customers without a flexible, customer-managed automatic payment option, any agency would find itself stretched thin. The City of Vancouver’s Water Utility Department was able to offer an automatic payment option, however, limitations with the functionality meant customers were unable to update their card information themselves. Vancouver staff found the process of storing and updating these payment methods was timely and difficult. Staff was spending up to 3 hours tracking down customers when their payment failed. The utility department was overburdened and ready for a change.

ADVANCED WEB SERVICES

Selectron advised expanding Vancouver’s web solution to include a customer profile, as well as adding stored and recurring payment options. This would empower customers to more easily manage their payments independently, reducing staff intervention. Additionally, the solution would be deployed in Selectron’s Managed Services Environment, decreasing the agency’s PCI footprint and protecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

REDUCED SHUTOFFS

Before the new solution was deployed, service agents went door-to-door to give delinquent customers one more chance to pay before services would be shut off. However, as service agents could not verify payment in person, this often resulted in a second trip to the property for service shutoff. Now, service agents are leveraging the web solution to accept secure, one-time payments in the field with a tablet. This approach increases revenue collection, prevents shutoffs, and decreases costs related to shutoffs.

POSITIVE CUSTOMER OUTCOMES

Our team works closely with our clients to understand their pain points and ensure that the solutions we develop provide true value to their everyday operations. For the City of Vancouver Utilities, this solution gave staff 3 hours back per day, allowing them to focus on higher-priority tasks while decreasing bill delinquency (and truck rolls) across the board. Utilities Administration Manager Amy Sorensen gratefully noted, “Our customers are always wanting more. I feel that Selectron can help us get to those next stages…. We have found Selectron to be a really good partner for us.”