Berea Municipal Utilities provides water, sewer, and electric services to approximately 6,000 residents and commercial customers. Responding to incidents with limited staff was frequently a challenge for the utility, especially after-hours. When a staff person was dispatched to respond to an incident, the same person was fielding multiple phone calls from customers. This resulted in delayed response times and safety concerns for staff who needed to focus on repairs in hazardous work environments.
Now the utility routes after-hours calls through Daupler Answering and Daupler RMS, which enables dispatched staff to prioritize response over customer communications. Daupler Engage allows customers to upload photos, share updates, and track the progress of response efforts.
Berea management reports that access to customer photos is a valuable tool for their teams. Often when a customer calls in, the call taker does not understand nuanced details about the issue. With a photo, incident management teams are better informed about the scale, severity, and required response. This has a significant impact on response times because crews prepare only what they need and arrive with all the necessary equipment to resolve an issue.
In the past, a customer might call two or three times before a crew arrived to address their issue. Today, Berea Municipal Utility customers can track incident response activity in real-time through Daupler Engage. Customers are informed when a crew member is dispatched, and they can see the name and photo of their main onsite contact.
By leveraging artificial technology (AI), discussed in greater detail in this blog post, Daupler’s Response Management System can also identify related calls and automate customer messages to provide information about known incidents and enable customer updates. During certain events, the customer opt-in rate for Berea’s text notifications has reached ninety percent. This dramatically reduces the call volume and related impact on utility resources.
View our video interview on customer engagement with Kevin Howard, general manager of Berea Municipal Utilities here.