Water

Main breaks. Water quality and safety issues. Essential repairs that temporarily halt delivery to hundreds of customers. Your organization must manage the flow of water and wastewater to service both your residential and commercial customers. How you handle service interruptions like contamination and water quality emergencies directly affects customer confidence.

Traditional methods of contacting customers—in routine or emergency situations—cost time and money. Inbound calls in an emergency can overwhelm even the largest customer service center, while call trees and door hangers are labor-intensive and time-consuming. As an essential service provider, water utilities need to have the capacity to contact thousands of customers in minutes, not hours.

The 3n InstaCom™ mass notification system enables water utilities to send voice and text messages quickly to large numbers of people. With the 3n mass notification system, water utilities can:

• Contact customers in minutes when experiencing unscheduled water service interruptions, such as main breaks, or water quality and safety issues. Reach tens, hundreds, or thousands of people in minutes with critical information about water safety or estimated repair times. With redundant data sites, multiple carriers, constant monitoring, and backup power, the 3n mass notification system is designed to operate without interruption, even when the business or regional communication infrastructure is damaged.
• Cut operating costs. Reduce the need for door hangers by automating how you notify business and residential customers in emergencies and for routine maintenance. With 3n InstaCom GIS, your organization can control operating costs by sending geographically targeted notifications to businesses and residences based on zip code, street address, radius from a specific point, or custom area you define.
• Reduce inbound calls to customer service. Although many water utilities post service updates on websites, many customers instead opt to call a customer support line. Reduce customer service time and labor by reaching customers before they reach you. When water main breaks and other service interruptions occur, irate customers inundate call centers with complaints and requests for additional information. Minimize customer support spikes with quick and efficient automated notifications that proactively alert customers to the scope, impact, and resolution of the situation.
• Increase customer outreach. Reach more customers proactively by automating routine manual communication processes. Water utilities can send rate schedules, charges, terms and conditions, and more for retail water and wastewater services using 3n InstaCom. Expedite collections by decreasing the time it takes to notify past-due accounts or streamline the delivery of billing reminders by automating manual call processes.
• Satisfy government communication compliance requirements. Federal mandates (such as the EPA Clean Water Act and the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Compliance) and state mandates (such as the California Health and Safety Code Chapter 4 and Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Unscheduled Water Service Interruptions Code Chapter 69), require water utilities to rapidly and efficiently notify customers on a water system if the water quality poses an imminent danger to the health of water users. Two-way communication capabilities, real-time confirmations, and full audit trail reporting of broadcasts and recipient confirmations enable water utilities to track down and deliver important messages, such as water safety warnings, to select customers or to an entire customer base and retain a history of communications as evidence of compliance with federal and state mandates.
• Improve field response times and internal communications. Accelerate and improve the effectiveness of internal communications. 3n InstaCom's advanced communication capabilities enable water utilities to initiate conference calls on the fly and quickly schedule work crews and coordinate teams in the field for faster response to crises as they evolve, quicker repair times, and enhanced customer confidence.