AWWA IMTECH55821

The water and wastewater industry can greatly benefit from the customer information/service technologies and trends emerging from the anticipation of and preparation for deregulation of its sister utilities, the power industry. The threat of deregulation is thrusting power utilities into a competitive environment where pressures to maintain customers, improve efficiency, and minimize costs will not merely be an option, but rather a necessity. Utilities will be forced to implement strategies to ensure that they are offering services to their customers that are unique and cannot be easily usurped by another utility. These utilities have seen a shift in the traditional utility paradigm from simply providing a service and billing for that service to providing a service (or more than one service), providing good customer service to administer the service(s), providing flexible billing functions (e.g., unbundled bills, electronic billing, etc.) to accommodate the service(s), and adopting technologies to maximize efficiency and minimize costs. This paper addresses the advancements in customer service/customer relationship management that power utilities are adopting and how the water and wastewater industry can benefit from these developments to enrich its customer service capabilities. Includes 14 references, figures.

Product Details

Edition:

Vol. - No.

Published:

01/01/2002

Number of Pages:

12

File Size:

1 file , 190 KB