ARE KIOSKS IN YOUR FUTURE? TPPA MARKETING & CUSTOMER SERVICE - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

ARE KIOSKS IN YOUR FUTURE? TPPA MARKETING & CUSTOMER SERVICE CONFERENCE MARCH 3, 2015 Vicki Reim Division Manager Customer Operations Bryan Texas Utilities

Bryan Texas Utilities (BTU)  Established in 1909, BTU serves the city of Bryan and 3 rural counties  Serves over 51,000 electric customers  22,000 water, wastewater, solid waste and transportation & drainage customers

BTU Planned Kiosk for:  Customer convenience  Let customers handle more of their own transactions – less hands-on from BTU staff  Eventual implementation of a new prepay system

BTU Prepay and Kiosk History  1998 - BTU implemented a prepay system, PowerTrack, utilizing card swipe technology  Prepay - extremely popular, over 4,ooo customers and never advertised!  Program limited due to lack of hardware available  Purchased a Diebold kiosk for vestibule entrance to lobby to process PowerTrack cards, accessible 24 hours/day

PowerTrack Prepay Program  Ended PowerTrack program and removed prepay meters in 2011 to prepare for AMI meter installations  Removed old kiosk  Ending PowerTrack was not popular with customers

Planning New Prepay  Planned a new prepay program to be implemented in late 2012  Knowing we were planning a new, redesigned prepay program helped customers accept that PowerTrack was ending  Determined we needed additional payment options for prepay customers: immediate, 24 hour, cash payments  Kiosks were the answer

BTU Kiosks  Purchased in 2012  5 Kiosks - 4 locations  Customized screens  Spanish option  Accept cash and checks. *Ending the option to pay by credit card due to PCI compliance, a BTU decision.

Kiosk Locations and Logistics  Located in 2 grocery stores, 1 convenience store (24 hr) and BTU lobby  Initially rolled out kiosks only in lobby, this helped employees and customers become familiar with kiosks  CSR stationed in lobby to help customers learn how to use it and become comfortable

Easy to Use  Easy account access  Kiosks read scan lines printed on:  Bills  Reminder and termination letters  Key cards  Keycard scan lines are linked to customers accounts.

Keycards

Kiosk Payments  Payments immediately post to customers accounts  Armored car service collects payments at remote kiosks every work day

BTU Kiosks – Future Plans  New prepay option originally planned for 2012 was pushed to 2014 (electric and water)  Prepay project put on hold in 2014  BTU was adding more prepay CIS related “help desk tickets” than were being fixed by the vendor. We were quality control for the prepay CIS product.  Waiting to implement until the large majority of CIS prepay issues are resolved

Where Do We See Kiosks In The Future?  Continuing as an important payment option  Expanding with a through-wall kiosk in the drive- through. Customers will stay in car.  One current location at 24-hour convenience store is the least used. Plans to move it to a more heavily traveled area and larger store.  24 hour location was needed when prepay was eminent, not critical now customers have other 24 hour payment options

Customer Payment Options  Customers have several payment options:  Internet - Credit Card – 28.2%  Mail – 24.5%  CSR Transactions (lobby and drive-through) – 20%  Bank Draft – 8.6%  Internet - Electronic Check – 6.3%  Kiosks – 6%  Wire Payments – 4.7%  Western Union – 1.7% Over 53,000 payments per month

Questions…?