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.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 190 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 12 |
| Published : | 01/01/2002 |
