Helping utilities improve business office operations and better serve their customers
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During the last couple of conferences I’ve spoken at, I’ve been surprised by how many utilities are still taking phone credit card payments in the office. There are at least three downsides to taking phone credit card payments in person […]
I’ve seen two related scenarios lately which merit discussing in more detail. The first case was a business review I recently completed for a utility that charges their cut-off fee as two separate charges – a cut-off fee, then a […]
During the Q&A period after speaking at a conference last week, one of the attendees asked me what I thought about a final bill fee. First-time question That’s a question I’ve never been asked before, so I had to think […]
I just completed a business review for a utility and calculated their Days of Exposure while I was on-site. If you’re not familiar with Days of Exposure, it’s the number of days of service a customer ends up owing for […]
A couple of months ago I wrote about delivery delays the Postal Service recently implemented. Unfortunately, longer delivery times aren’t the only bad news coming from the Postal Service – they recently raised rates for the second time in a […]
I’ve completed the migration of my website to my new domain. It still has the same useful content, but you’ll now find it at utilityinformationpipeline.com rather than garysandersonline.com. Not to worry – if you have links saved to my old […]
I recently saw a social media post ranking NFL quarterbacks into tiers. This got me thinking about random hierarchies like the food pyramid and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which led to the idea of a hierarchy of payments. I’ve always […]
I’ve been preparing for an upcoming speaking engagement for the Alliance of Indiana Rural Water’s annual Leadership Summit where one of my topics will be “Is it Time for a Rate Increase?” One of the points I make in this […]
We’ve all heard it, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”. As familiar as this is, surprisingly, it isn’t actually the official motto of the US […]
Each year for the past several years, fiserv has published a report of consumer payment trends. I find these to be interesting and informative and I’ve used them as the source for previous newsletters. Interestingly, the title of the most […]