Coweta water authority looking at new technology
By SARAH FAY CAMPBELLsarah@newnan.com
The Coweta County Water and Sewerage Authority has made a few technological upgrades over the years, and is now considering offering customers the option to receive their bills by e-mail.
The e-mail billing system will cut down on postage costs, said Alan Sibley, human resources director for the authority, at Tuesday’s budget workshop. The annual workshop was held at the B.T. Brown Water Treatment Plant.
“We need to shorten those prompts,” said Sibley said. The authority is charged per minute when someone uses the system, and shortening the prompts will cut down on those per-minute charges. In addition to shortening the prompts, Sibley wants to improve the payment interface.
Sibley is also looking into changing the current system that calls customers when they are in danger of having their service disconnected, known as “BEN.”
“Right now, they can’t make a payment when BEN calls them,” Sibley said. He wants to have a system that will allow customers to make their payment during the same phone call.
The changes will require an entirely new interactive voice recognition system. There’s no timeline for the changes, as of yet.
“We’re still investigating it right now,” Sibley said.
The authority introduced a new bill format several months ago, and a recent improvement has been the installation of a new product called “muni view.” When someone comes in or calls to pay a bill or ask a question, customer service representatives can now pull up an exact copy of the customer’s bill, Sibley said. They can even print a copy of it for the customer.
