6.5. ERMUSR 03-10-2009 - Laserfiche WebLink

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36 hour workweek impact on Administration -March 2009 Over the past years we have added staff to take care of the customer base as it has grown. The staff we have are matched to take care of the customers we have. There has not been a reduction in the number of customers we are serving, nor the work related to those customers. If anything, we have seen an increase in the workload as we deal. with changing property owners related to foreclosures, and increased collections responsibilities as there are more customers making payment arrangements and needing additional assistance. There are approximately 10,000 bills that are sent out every month and each of those bills has services related to that bill. There are customer calls that come in, but there are also meters to be read, payments to process, collections to be made, move ins and move outs to process, as well as creating and mailing the bills. This all takes time and many of these tasks are very time critical in nature. If the staff is reduced in any capacity, the customer service will be compromised. One very big concern with a reduced work week is what hours we would have to close the offices and not be available to the public. It would be impractical to try and remain open forty hours for the public when the staff can only work 36. Staggering the work start and end times for staff will not work because the busiest customer activity on any given day is at the beginning and end of the day. We need to have as many staff as possible available at these times and we would be shorthanded if we had to stagger hours. In talking with staff at the office and trying to identify what would be able to change to accomplish the same amount of work in less time, we are ultimately going to have to work at a frantic pace on some things and that could lead to errors and inaccuracies. As issues come up with customers, there is usually some amount of "research" to be done -looking at and analyzing history, verifying meter numbers and setup, etc. These are the issues that would be compromised the most as staff would not have the time to fully research items and it would take much longer to get back to a customer that required any amount of research. Other items identified that would suffer would be timely deposit returns, collection efforts, website management and updates, review of customer budget accounts, and purchasing quotes for the best prices. Simply answering the phones and taking care of the walk in customers will prove challenging. There are times when all five front people are answering phones and assisting walk in customers and calls ring back to three other desks and those staff are needed to provide customer service. As everyone is busy trying to manage their workload, calls could continue to cycle through the office for several minutes before they are handled, which leads to very unhappy customers. The majority of customers won't associate a reduction in customer service with the utilities as the utilities "doing their part" in a struggling economy. They would like to see a reduction in their bill, but not in their service.