In utility revenue assurance, traditionally it has been the case that customer accounts whether in electricity, water or gas are disconnected upon non-payment. Fieldmaster excels in deep integrations with the billing systems and managing and automating these field tasks. However, through our decades of experience in this industry, we have seen that revenue assurance firms can both increase collections and significantly reduce fieldwork costs by having a payment plan system in place that handles the full workflow end-to-end. This is especially helpful for high consumption accounts or lower income customers.
The major challenges for this case are:
The components of this solution are as follows:
Fieldmaster's user-friendly interfaces are used at customer contact centers where personnel who are authorized to create payment plans can set the monthly payment amounts and any advance payment if applicable. It can be tailored to provide access to change the payment amounts from month-to-month.
An approval workflow can be added to the creation process for multiple levels to sign off before the payment plan agreement becomes valid.
Fieldmaster also provides functional interfaces for call center personnel to capture customer touchpoints and create payment plans. This is a pre-emptive approach by first generating filtered accounts that are more likely to require payment plans, then contacting them for the agreements. We've seen that this approach helps increase collections while also maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction.
The call center approach can also be implemented as a final reminder step before initiating field work.
Through integration with the payment channels and billing system, the Fieldmaster system knows the current outstanding amount of the customer. This enables the following automated functionality:
A unique and secure link can be created for each payment plan, which the end-customer can view at any time. This contains details of their payment plan, which can also update in real time if any changes are made.
Based on the created payment plan, we usually follow a 3-day reminder approach:
The reminders can be sent by email or SMS. Note that this is only a recommended approach and we completely tailor the process to meet specific business requirements.
Finally, if all else fails, there is fully automated integration with Fieldmaster's task management engine:
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