Posted by Perry Lewis on Sat, Nov 21, 2009
Why do unnecessary extra work? If someone else is willing to do something for you, then there really isn’t any reason to do it twice. I’m sure your organization receives numerous checks from different online payment services such as Metavante, Check Free, BA Merchant Services, First Data and Fisery. You receive the payment as a check (probably without a remittance stub) and process it as you would any other payment. Just think of how much easier your payment processing would be if entering these checks only took a few clicks and everything was done.
In an e-mail from a check payment processing company to one of our clients, it was stated that there were over 4,000 mutual customers and that in one month almost 2,000 individual checks were mailed. Just think of all the time and money that will be saved if you have all that information transmitted electronically! Think of all the time and frustration of processing those payments you’d save if your organization received all those checks in an electronic file format that can be processed through a file import into your software. All it takes is a few e-mails or phone calls to those payment processing companies that send you checks each month and a call to your software provider to find out how to get the process to import the file. The best part is it is a win-win situation for everyone involved. Oh, and you also save all those trees by going paper-free.
Posted by Perry Lewis on Tue, Nov 17, 2009
The October 24th – 30th2009 issue of The Economist had an article titled “Of farms, folks, and fish.” Being a Southern California native, I’m always intrigued by all things related to water in California. I remember as a kid watching the installation of the Morongo Basin Pipeline down the street adjacent to our neighbor’s house. I was amazed that all that water was coming from hundreds of miles away and going to go under our street to provide water to our dry desert. According to the Mojave Water Agency website, since water began to flow through the 71-mile pipeline it has continued to serve nearly 60,000 people and businesses over 455 square miles of the High Desert. But where does that water come from? It comes from the East Branch of the California Aqueduct, which begins at the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta and is ground zero of the California water wars.
Since California is the world’s eighth-largest economy, water rights will continue to be a hot topic until either more water magically appears or everyone is happy. According to this article, the latter of these two seems possible, but it could come too late for some farmers. The outcome of how California’s water problems can be fixed is being anxiously awaited by not only Californians and the economies that rely on California, but all the water districts in California that have been affected by water conservation efforts.
Posted by Perry Lewis on Sun, Nov 15, 2009
I recently had an interesting discussion with one of the well-known leaders in his market, Erik Amelink of teleWORKS. Buying into an IVR solution is not about technology; it’s about providing better service for your customers and leveraging your staff’s time. Yeah, the technology is very cool, but it’s really about eliminating some of the most tedious and unpleasant parts of your workflow, so that you can make more intelligent use of your resources.
As I discussed in another post, do you really WANT to be in the business of calling people about their delinquent account? 
Do your customers really WANT to be called by someone in your office, or is this something that both parties would do better by being automated?
A significant part of employee turnover can be attributed to doing unpleasant tasks like delinquency reminders. As the technology improves, those organizations that can communicate with their customers in more ways and eliminate repetitive, time-consuming work will be able to respond more quickly to their leadership and their consumers.
Posted by Perry Lewis on Mon, Nov 09, 2009
How many times have you personally opened a bill and tossed everything but the bill and the reply envelope? Every utility has to communicate information to their customers. It may be about a planned outage, a rate increase, promoting conservation, or any variety of topics. Customers usually can’t afford to disregard the bill, but they can disregard the rest of the information that’s been included.
Believe it or not, there is a simple solution: write the most important information you need to communicate on the bill itself. By using targeted messages to reach certain customers you’re more likely to catch their attention. In both printed and e-mailed bills, you’ll be able to put that message front and center. In an article titled, The Right Stuff: When and How to Make Bill Inserts Effective, in Electric Light & Power, writer Betsy Loeff talks about “to stuff or not to stuff”. Sure, there will be inserts you want to include with the statements, but sometimes it could be more sensible to include a line or two on the statement. Just think; your customers will be more likely to read the information that has a direct effect on their service and you’ll be saving a little money by not including an insert about that specific topic. Hyperlink: The Right Stuff
Posted by Perry Lewis on Thu, Nov 05, 2009
It may not mean much to the developed world, but inventor Dean Kamen (of Segway fame) has come up with a way to provide clean water to remote and underdeveloped areas.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/130735
It’s not cheap, but it works.