If you’ve lost every electric bill for the past three years, you can get a record of those, too, with graphs illustrating when you use the most juice. A new Web- and phone-based bill system was launched last week by the city utility.
About 540 people visited the Web site, and 90 calls were made to the automated phone system in its first week. Thirty-one payments were made, said Sam Shelby, the city’s e-government coordinator.
The Web site and phone system are ready to handle thousands of contacts per week, Shelby said.
To access the system, you must have a Social Security number on file with the utility, which most customers already have. Payments can be made by credit card or e-check.
"Once you get in the system, it’s pretty easy to use," Shelby said. "This is basically a Web version of what you receive in the mail."
The city contracted with Blacksburg, Va.-based Tele-Works for $79,500 to get the system running. The city is encouraging its customers to use the system to free up staff time spent processing bills for other customer services.
The system will be particularly useful in July and August, when students are coming back to college and the utility is flooded with requests for service, Columbia Finance Director Lori Fleming said.
"I think it will be one more tool to work with customers when we’re trying to get their bills paid," Fleming said. "Sometimes we get people on our shut-off list because they’ve just gotten busy and haven’t had time to pay their bill."
Shelby said the next big projects he’s working on are creating an online bill-paying system for municipal court fines and fees and creating a Web-based service that features the city’s building inspection reports.
The automated utility phone billing service can be reached by calling 874-7694.
The Web-based bill system is at www.GoColumbiaMo.com. In the "GoWords" box, type in "GoUtilities" and click "Go."
Autor: Chuck Adamson
Quelle: Columbia Daily Tribune, 13.02.2005
