Nassau, New Providence – Old habits die hard, and change can be difficult, but change is coming for customers of the Water & Sewerage Corporation and the way they receive and pay their bills. In the age of the internet, manual transactions have become inefficient, time consuming and costly, both to businesses and to the consumer as well. As digital technologies continue to evolve, receiving bills in your inbox will eventually lessen or replace the need to make that trip to your post office box.

The Water and Sewerage Corporation has spent the last ten years improving the way it does business by making use of technology to automate its business processes including the mapping of its facilities, using reverse osmosis, building an interactive website, connecting with consumers via social media and now by going paperless.

“With the trends in technology and the access and convenience that our customers have come to expect from their utility companies, the move toward a paperless environment only made sense” explained Public Affairs Manager Visna Armbrister.  “But the transition has not been easy.”

The corporation’s ‘Go Paperless’ Campaign introduced the efficient and environmentally friendly concept of E-notifications in 2015, which they hoped would reduce paper waste and allow customers to receive billing statements via email. The Corporation also launched its own WSC Mobile App in 2016, to ease this transition and make billing and paying, accessible on mobile phones and iPad.

“Even with lots of promotion and advertising we still struggled to get many to physically sign up for the service,” noted Armbrister. “Change is a hard concept and people like to get bills and receipts in hand. But improving the efficiency of this process will not only benefit the corporation but the consumer as well, giving them access at any time to see or pay bills – when they want!”

With hopes of improving customer engagement, WSC management turned to their staff to assist in the process. Both New Providence and Family Islands staff were asked to help.  “We created an in-house competition which provided further incentive for our employees to engage each client at every service point to sign up. Each customer signing up received $10 credit and each employee received a dollar per sign up plus a grand prize.

“They were able to add more than two thousand sign ups, to our already impressive list of email addresses. We really could not have achieved this milestone without the work of our enthusiastic and dedicated staff” Armbrister noted. “They took the time to explain the process, the convenience of the system and the benefit to each valued customer.”

Staff were acknowledged for their hard work in this program.  In New Providence, Dona Wilson-Haley, signed up the most customers, with Pamela Griffin and Jessica Alcira securing second and third respectively.  In the Family Islands, sign-ups were equally impressive particularly on the islands of Abaco and Eleuthera. Costella Lewis and Vandeka Curry – both Abaco office – claimed the top two spots and Tamara Munroe rounded out the top three for Eleuthera.

Since WSC’s launch of the ‘paperless campaign’ more than sixteen-thousand customers have signed up to receive e-notifications and enjoyed a ten-dollar credit on their accounts.  “We have an overall goal of twenty thousand and we are getting there,” said Armbrister. “We are hoping to accomplish this goal by the end of the year.   If you haven’t signed up for e-notification as yet, join the more than 16,000 customers who have already done so and are now reaping the reward of receiving billing statements on time, every time, no matter where they are.”