APPA Customer Service Benchmarking Program

Your Company Name should appear here.
DO NOT proceed if this is not your company name or if this is blank.

Do not edit this name.
If the name is incorrect, please contact debi.mclain@1QConsulting.com

Contact Name

Phone Number

Email Address

In which region of the country is your utility located?

Northeast

Southeast

Midwest/Plains/Texas/Louisiana

West of the Rockies

Which commodities do you provided?

View the glossary at www.1QConsulting.com/2008_APPA_Glossary.mht

View the data collection guide at www.1QConsulting.com/2008_APPA_Data_Collection_Guide.htm

General rules:
1) enter percents as whole numbers. 2% = 2, 0.05% = 0.05
2) leave unanswered questions blank -- don't enter N/A, none or anything else
3) don't add % or $ signs to numbers. Don't enter any text with numbers (or else they won't get graphed)
4) provide most current Fiscal year end or last calendar year, whichever is more recent.

Statistical

1| What was the average number of customer accounts you had last year? We'll do some analysis and make some adjustments when using these counts for denominators. For rows 1 to 5, the avg. no. of commodities is "1". For rows 6 to 10, the avg. no. of commodities is "2". For row 14, the avg. no. of commodities is "3". All other rows, please provide the avg. no. of commodities based on your account population.

	Accounts	Average Number of Commodities on Account
1\| Electric Only [1 commodity]
2\| Gas Only [1 commodity]
3\|Water Only [1 commodity]
4\|Waste Water Only [1 commodity]
5\|Solid waste Only [1 commodity]
6\| Telecom Only [1 commodity]
7\| Cable Only [1 commodity]
8\| Electric & Gas [2 commodities]
9\| Electric & Water [2 commodities]
10\| Gas & Water [2 commodities]
11\| Electric, Gas & Water [3 commodities]
12\| Electric, Gas & Other [3 or more commodities]
13\| Electric, Water & Other [3 or more commodities]
14\| Gas, Water & Other [3 or more commodities]
15\| Electric, Gas, Water & Other [>3 Commodities]
16\| Other

2| What is the number of customers you use when reporting customer counts in company documents such as annual reports? Use your own definition of a customer – whether accounts or meters or something else. This is a checkpoint to compare against the previous question.

	Customers
Internal customer count

3| What percent of customers are residential?

4| Please provide the following statistics.

	Stats
Square Miles in Service Territory
Electric Distribution Structure Miles
Gas Distribution Main Miles
Water Distribution Main Miles

5| In which functional area are the following major activities located? Note: this assumes that a different VP/Director is in charge of each of the three functions.

	Customer Service	Distribution	City Department	Other
Contact Center
Meter Reading
Field Service non-credit activities
Field Service credit activities
Billing
Payment Processing
Credit & Collections Office activities

6| What were the incident rates for the following safety measures in 2007?

	Recordable Incident Rate	Lost Time Incident Rate	Vehicle Incident Rate - Company Vehicles [Preventable and non-]	Vehicle Incident Rate - Private Vehicles [Preventable and non-]
Total Customer Service organization
Meter Reading [field staff]
Field Service [field staff]

Financial

7| In the table below enter your O&M costs for the year.

	Contact Center	Field Service	Meter Reading	Billing	Payment Processing	Credit Office
Company Labor
Contract Labor
Contracted Services
Technology
Vehicles
Telephone Service Charges
Transaction Fees
Materials
Postage
Write-offs
other

8| Please allocate your contact center costs to the following locations. The total of table should equal total of Contact Center column in the main matrix.

	Costs
Call Center
Local Office

9| Please allocate your meter reading costs to the following activities. The total of table should equal total of meter reading column in the main matrix.

	Costs
AMI – Fixed Network
AMR - Mobile
Manual Reads

10| Please allocate your field service costs to the following activities. The total of table should equal total of field service column in the main matrix.

	Cost
Billing Issue Orders[includes high bill investigation in field, check reads, rereads]
Credit Orders [includes notice delivery, field collections, disconnects, reconnects]
Change of Account Orders [new and moves, turn-ons/turn-offs]
Dispatch
Other

11| How much were the average fees per transaction for each activity? [Enter 0 if no charge] [Provide data only for your company, not third party providers]

	Residential	Commercial/Industrial
New account initiation [$]
Same day new connection [$]
Pay by credit card [%]
Late fee [%]
Disconnect notice [$]
Reconnect after non-pay [$]
After hours reconnect fee [$]
Charge for field visit [$]
Returned Check fee [$]
Other [$]

12| How much revenue did you generate from the following fees?

	Residential	Commercial/Industrial
New account initiation
Same day new connection
Late fee
Disconnect notice
Reconnect after non-pay
After hours reconnect fee
Charge for field visit
Returned Check fee
Other

12a| How much operating revenue [from sales of commodity to ultimate customers] did you collect last year?

	2007
Revenue

13| What percent of revenue was from residential customers?

14| What percent of write-offs was from residential customers?

15| What was the standard adder for Pensions & Benefits expense?

	Adder
Percent adder for P&B

16| What percent overhead rate do you apply to direct labor for your budget?

	Rate (Percent)
Overhead Rate

Contact Center

17| How many locations do you have for handling customer contacts?

	Locations
Contact centers [company-staffed, separate and distinct from Local Offices]
Secondary or satellite contact centers [full-time, smaller, company-staffed centers]
Local offices [customers can perform utility transactions]
Kiosks [company owned]
Pay agencies or locations [e.g. supermarkets, convenience stores]

18 |How many customer contacts (calls, email, fax, correspondence) are completed by each of the following?

	Contacts
Company Phone Answering Reps
Contract Phone Answering Reps
Local Office Reps
IVR/VRU (autocompleted)
Website (autocompleted)

19| What percent of incoming contacts were related to each activity?

	Contacts
New Service or Change of account [turn-on/turn-off]
High bill complaint or investigation
Service disruption
Accept payments or deposits
Credit activities
Other

20| What was your average speed of answer [ASA] for each after calls leave IVR?

	Seconds
Calls answered in Call Center
Calls answered in Local Office
Blended and/or Breakdown not available

21| What percent of calls were answered in 30 seconds?

	Percent [%]
Calls answered in Call Center
Calls answered in Local Office
Blended and/or Breakdown not available

22| What percent of calls were abandoned?

23| Please describe any initiatives or activities that you have undertaken recently or in the past to improve Contact Center.

Self-Service IVR/Internet Transactions

24| Which transaction types can be autocompleted on IVR and Web?

	IVR	Website
New Customer or Change of Account
Sign up for other/additional commodity services/Dereg
High bill or billing issue
Pay bill
Pay deposit
Sign up for E-bill
Provide meter read
Credit [arrange credit extension, etc]
Low Income Assistance
Streetlight trouble
Gas/Water Leak or Electric Interruption
General Company Information
Get Account information [view bill, view usage]
Other

25| What activities or initiatives have been successful, recently added, or attempted and dropped with the goal of improving IVR or Website transactions?

Field Service

26| How many field orders were completed during the year for each commodity?

	Change of account	Credit related	Billing investigations	2006YE	2005YE
Electric
Gas
Water

27| How many field orders were completed during the year for each credit activity?

	Orders
Field visit to leave disconnect notice
Field visit to collect or disconnect customer
Field visit to disconnect only
Field visit to reconnect – standard business hours
Field visit to reconnect – after-hours service

28| What percent of your change of accounts (turn-off service) are handled in these ways?

	Percent
Read & Disconnect
Read the meter (manual or AMR)-no disconnet
Read the meter (AMI)-no disconnect
Estimate Only
Use last read Only
Use next read Only
System proration Only
Other Only

28a| Explain 'Other' in question 14.

29| What percent of field service reps are dispatched using mobile data terminals?

30| What have you done, if anything, to reduce trips to the field for high bill investigations?

31| Please describe any initiatives or activities that you have undertaken recently or in the past to improve Field Service.

Meter Reading

32| How many meters did you have on your system that are read by each method?

	Manual	AMR - Mobile	AMI - Fixed Network
Electric
Gas
Water

33| How many meter reads by reading method did you perform last year? [for billing purposes only]

	Manual	AMR - Mobile	AMI - Fixed Network
Electric
Gas
Water

34| What percent of your meters are scheduled to be read monthly [for billing purposes]?

	Residential	Commercial	Industrial
Electric
Gas
Water

35| How many meter reading errors were identified before bills were sent to customers?

	Errors
Manual
AMR - Mobile
AMI - Fixed Network

36| How many meter reading errors were found after bills were mailed to customers?

	Errors
Manual
AMR - Mobile
AMI - Fixed Network

37| How many meter reads were missed on their planned meter read date?

	Missed Reads
Manual
AMR - Mobile
AMI - Fixed Network

38| How many meter reads were not completed during their scheduled window?

	Reads
Manual
AMR - Mobile
AMI - Fixed Network

39| What is your typical meter read window [days]?

40| Please describe any initiatives or activities that you have undertaken recently or in the past to improve Meter Reading.

Billing and Payment

41| How many bills did you issue through each channel? If you issue a paper and electronic bill, count only once and count as paper.

	Bills
Via paper
Via internet [customer must look up info, include here even if a reminder e-mail is sent]
Via e-mail [customer gets billing information via email, doesn’t have to visit web-site to view their bill]

42| How many bills did you issue that were estimated? List according to the reason for estimating.

	Bills
Reading Error
Missed Read
Planned Estimate
Other

42a| Explain 'Other' in question 3.

43| How many billing problems were identified?

	Problems
Pre-bill audit [flagged for review]
Errors found before the bill was mailed to the customer
Errors found after the bill was mailed to the customer

44| Please describe any initiatives or activities that you have undertaken recently or in the past to improve Billing.

45| How many payments were by each payment method? [should be roughly equivalent to bills issued]

	Payments
Cash
Check
Credit card/Debit card
Electronic transfer
ACH
EDI

46| What percent of payments were received through the IVR or internet?

47| What percent of payments were processed using in-house image processing?

	Percent of Payments
In-house image processing

48| Please describe any initiatives or activities that you have undertaken recently or in the past to improve Payment Processing.

Credit & Collections

49| What percent of customers are 60 days or more past due?

	Percent of Customers
Residential
C/I: Small [or Commercial]
C/I: Large [or Industrial]

50| During an average month, what percent of your receivables are …

	Total
Current
30-59 days
60-89 days
90+ days

51| What are your average days sales outstanding?

52| From what percent of new customers did you collect a deposit?

53| Please identify your calculation approach for determining appropriate deposit amounts. [Check one box in each row.]

	More than one month's average usage	Average of one month's usage	Formula other than average usage	No deposit required	Depends on customer credit history
New residential customer
Existing customer with change of service location
Reconnected Residential Customer After Disconnect For Non-Pay
New Commercial Customer
New Industrial Customer

54| Please check any factors or other formulas used for determination of deposit requirements in the table above.

External credit-scoring service

Prior service with your utility

Prior service with another utility with which you share data

Prior write-offs/disconnections at the premise location

Provision of a valid Social Security # or equivalent

Positive Identification

Internal credit-scoring system

Other

55| Which analytical tools do you use?

Credit scoring for new customers

Behavioral scoring for existing customers

Credit management software for delinquent accounts

Other

56| Please describe your behavioral scoring system and what actions [e.g. change in deposits] you take when a customer's credit behavior changes.

57| What percent of your write-offs were covered by deposits at the time of write-off?

58| Please describe your disconnection policies.

	Calendar Days
Minimum days past due before allowed to disconnect
Average days past due when field order issued for disconnection

59| Do you collect payments in the field?

Yes

No

60| Please describe any initiatives or activities that you have undertaken recently or in the past to improve Credit and Collections.

Staffing

61| How many FTEs were in each category?

	Call Center	Local Office	Meter Reading	Field Service	Billing	Payment Processing	Credit & Collections
Full-time
Part-time
Shared
Contract

63| What are the average hourly wage rates in each of the following direct labor categories?

	Avg. Wage Rate
Contact Center: Call Center Rep
Contact Center: Local Office Rep
Contact Center: Training
Meter Reader
Field Service Rep
Billing Clerk
Payment Processing Clerk
Payment Processing: Cashier
C&C Office Rep

64| What percent of direct customer contact activity is outsourced in each functional area? We would like outsourced to a 3rd party, not contract labor.

	Percent
Contact center incoming calls
Contact center outbound calls [not including credit or outage]
Outage notification: outbound
Meter Reading reads
Field Service Orders
Billing bills issued
Payment processing: payments processed
Credit & Collections: outbound calls
Credit & Collections: delivery of notices
Revenue Assurance

Customer Satisfaction

65| How do you measure customer satisfaction? Indicate whether this is a formal or informal process, how it's administered, how often it's performed, etc.

66| What is your overall percent of customer satisfaction?

67| If you've seen an improvement in customer satisfaction recently, to what do you attribute this change?

Indicates Response Required

	Accounts	Average Number of Commodities on Account
1\| Electric Only [1 commodity]
2\| Gas Only [1 commodity]
3\|Water Only [1 commodity]
4\|Waste Water Only [1 commodity]
5\|Solid waste Only [1 commodity]
6\| Telecom Only [1 commodity]
7\| Cable Only [1 commodity]
8\| Electric & Gas [2 commodities]
9\| Electric & Water [2 commodities]
10\| Gas & Water [2 commodities]
11\| Electric, Gas & Water [3 commodities]
12\| Electric, Gas & Other [3 or more commodities]
13\| Electric, Water & Other [3 or more commodities]
14\| Gas, Water & Other [3 or more commodities]
15\| Electric, Gas, Water & Other [>3 Commodities]
16\| Other