Adding a New Level of 24/7 Service with Chatbot

THE OPPORTUNITY

White House Utility District (WHUD) is geographically Tennessee’s largest water and sewer utility. The utility serves three different counties, each with its own unique footprint and customer base. To meet the wide-ranging payment preferences of its 39,000 customers, WHUD’s long-standing partnership with Paymentus centered around delivering a comprehensive set of bill payment options that now includes ACH, AutoPay, credit cards, debit cards, digital wallets and interactive voice response (IVR).

But with a limited staff of four Customer Care Specialists (CCS), WHUD needed an always-on self-service tool to help its customers quickly and easily address their billing, payment and account management needs. To meet this need, the WHUD team deployed the Paymentus Chatbot.

THE SOLUTION

Initially, White House Utility District developed a live chat feature on their website run by its customer care team. While this offered immediate customer assistance, the live chat option was still limited to office hours and took time away from important CCS initiatives. Sensing an opportunity to expand and automate its customer service capabilities, WHUD partnered with Paymentus to implement a 24/7, AI-driven chatbot that is also available on multiple pages of their website.

The upside of a chatbot that can accept payments following strict financial and compliance regulations is obvious. However, one of the biggest drivers for WHUD revolved around the Paymentus chatbot’s ability to provide a full-service experience that goes well beyond scheduling and accepting payments. The Paymentus chatbot offers customers a host of capabilities including resolving account questions, checking balances, contacting live help and emailing CCS for more specific help in increasingly rare occasions.

The conversational chatbot also leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to continuously improve its performance. In testing, the WHUD team was particularly impressed with chatbot’s ability to pick up on specific keywords to best answer queries, without the user having to provide letter-perfect prompts.

Another important factor in the success of chatbot is its customization capabilities. For WHUD, this meant building a comprehensive database of nearly 100 questions that the chatbot could automatically pull from to quickly answer customers’ routine questions. This database can continue to grow as the utility’s needs expand.

THE RESULTS & INITIAL CUSTOMER REVIEWS

White House Utility District’s chatbot was an immediate success with customers and staff. Interestingly, the WHUD team noted that even during office hours, more customers used the chatbot than the live chat offering.

In the seven months since its chatbot implementation, White House Utility District has experienced the following:

• Nearly 25,000 chatbot conversations, with approximately one payment being processed per every seven conversations
• “View My Bill” was the second most-clicked option, trailing only “Pay My Bill”
• This usage shows chatbot’s ability to deliver information and act as an additional account management source
• “Schedule My Payment,” “Discontinue Service” and “Restore Service” were other top-used phrases specific to completing and automating actions
• The average customer feedback rating was of 4.07 out of 5

AN HOUR SAVED EACH DAY

White House Utility District has also noticed a decrease in call volumes and walk-in payments. The team estimates that the chatbot now saves CCS up to an hour each day in handling customer issues and processing payments.