5 things eating up your utility staff’s time

Most utility offices lose time in five areas each month: the billing run, print and mail, payments around the due date, calls about balances and bills, and past-due accounts.

No one schedules these tasks, so they don’t show up on a calendar. They show up as a full inbox, a line at the counter, and a billing day that ends with everything still half-checked.

Nobody blocked off 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. to “figure out why Mrs. Johnson’s payment isn’t showing.” Somehow, it still makes the schedule.

Here’s how the time gets devoured each month.

Where does time go during the billing run?

Reads come in, exceptions get reviewed, and statements get produced. The delays here come from handoffs. When your billing software, meter reading system, and other office tools don’t talk to each other, staff retype and recheck data that already exists somewhere else.

That’s frustrating. Maybe a little horrifying once you realize how much time it eats up. The information exists; your staff just gets the privilege of finding it again.

Ask your team one question: how many times does a single meter read get touched before it becomes a bill?

If the answer follows a long pause, there’s probably some time to win back.

Where does time go around the due date?

The due-date rush is where small offices feel it most. Time doesn’t leak out evenly across the month. It drains on a few predictable days: the first of the month when bills land, the due date, and the cutoff date.

You know those days. Everyone does.

Arthur-Shawanee Utility District in Tennessee described the change after moving to UPM this way: “Our big days are a thing of the past. We just don’t seem to have as many customers coming in on the due date or cutoff date to pay.”

Payment options matter here. East Montgomery Utility District (TN) estimates its mail-in payments dropped by about 75% after it added new ways to pay.

Big drops in mailed and walk-in payments do more than save postage and processing time. They change what those few very busy days look like for the people in the office.

Where does time go on the phone?

Most calls are the same few questions: What do I owe? Did you get my payment? Why is my bill so high?

If you work in a utility office, you could probably recite those before your first cup of coffee.

Real-time account balances, online payments, and automated phone payments answer the first two without staff. Glasgow Water Company in Kentucky credits real-time balances and an automated phone system with reducing call frequency. Less than 25 miles away, the city of Munfordville reports call volume fell by about 70% after it added Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

That’s a meaningful number. Besides an obviously quieter office, a phone that rings 70% less often gives staff a chance to finish whatever they were doing before it rang.

Questions about billing take longer. Pinpointing why one customer’s bill jumped can take a leak check, a meter review, and a few callbacks. Better meter data and leak detection shorten that process.

Where does time go on delinquent accounts?

Past-due notices, shutoff lists, truck rolls, and reconnects add up fast. Every shutoff creates a second trip when the customer pays.

That means one unpaid bill can turn into office work, field work, another customer interaction, and two trips in a truck—and that’s if each handoff is clean. A messy handoff can waste even more time.

Bedford County Utility District in Tennessee used to shut off around 100 accounts per month. After moving to UPM, that number dropped to fewer than 25. (We didn’t believe it at first, either!)

That’s fewer notices, fewer trips, and fewer reconnects. More importantly, it is time that can go somewhere else, like cleaning up records or tackling project work.

What software won’t fix

Software does not fix every time sink, and our UPM ecosystem is no different.

A staffing shortage is a staffing shortage. Complicated board policies and unclear procedures also cost hours, and no system removes them. A skipped training session still produces a botched handoff.

Sometimes the problem really is the process. And that’s the scariest part.

The best first step is to write down the routine tasks your team repeats each month, then decide which ones a system should handle and which ones need a decision from you.

The goal isn’t to put more technology into the process. It’s to remove work that shouldn’t be there.

How to find your own answer

Pick one month. Have each person on your team track their time by stage: reads, billing, payments, calls, and delinquent accounts.

Don’t overcomplicate it with a zillion-column spreadsheet. Try to make it as easy on your future self as possible.

Once the answers begin to trickle in, there’s a decent chance the biggest time drain won’t be the one you expected.

If you’d like help making sense of what you find, contact our team. We’ll walk through your monthly cycle with you and show you where other utilities found time.