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Within the utilities industry there is real concern from watchdogs, governing bodies and the general public regarding the number of estimated bills issued each year. A report by Energywatch, the gas and electricity watchdog, has stated that complaints about inaccurate gas and electricity bills are soaring. Suppliers receive around 60 million queries a year, most of which are about billing. According to figures from gas and electricity suppliers about a third of customers query their bill every quarter.
Traditionally, to ensure accurate billing, utilities must collect meter readings from each customer's property, each billing cycle, by manually reading the meter. Increasingly customers' homes are unoccupied during the daytime and as a result engineers are unable to gain access to the property and thereby unable to read the meter. The outcome is that many customers receive estimated bills each billing cycle, leading to dissatisfaction over higher than expected bills; a common cause of late payments.
Sending engineers to empty properties, collecting readings over the telephone and chasing late payments is not cost effective.
Product:
Telrock has developed a system that enables utilities' customers to report their gas and electricity meter readings via SMS.
Customer Initiated
Details of SMS meter read submission are printed on no access cards, left by engineers, and on quarterly statements. For SMS submission, customers are instructed to send an SMS text message containing their customer reference number and meter reading to a dedicated number.
Supplier Initiated
Suppliers can make requests for meter read submission by contacting customers directly via SMS. For SMS requests, batches of SMS submission requests can be sent to customers' mobile phones. Each request will introduce the meter read service and request that the customer collect their meter reading and text it back by replying to the message.
All meter read submissions via SMS are validated and formatted by Telrock. If any information (customer reference or meter reading) is invalid the customer will be notified of the error and requested to resubmit. Telrock report all validated readings to the supplier's database in the appropriate format.