Okay, we admit it. We’re not perfect.
But we were awfully close in the annual audit of College Station Utilities’ commercial sanitation billing. The audit revealed that out of about 980 commercial accounts, we had a single error. That’s right, just one. And it was for an under-billing.
Can you imagine a major league baseball player who made just one error in 980 chances?
College Station Utilities takes pride in producing accurate bills to our customers. In most cases, the service level doesn’t change once the account is set up, except with commercial sanitation billing. Businesses are provided services and charged by a variable rate schedule that depends on the volume of waste they generate. This means they can change their internal procedures to change the amount of waste they produce. When this happens, we may need to adjust the number of days we collect their waste, or we may even need to remove their container and place a different one at their location. The billing is then changed to reflect the new level of service.
Sanitation staff does a tremendous job of letting Utility Customer Service know when this happens. Once the service level change is determined, the change is made to the sanitation driver’s collection route sheet to reflect the new pick-up days, and the customer service staff updates the billing records.
So how do we ensure that the billing accurately reflects the current level of service? The annual audit includes a comprehensive examination of our records to check for any billing errors. For every commercial account, sanitation staff provides customer service staff with the driver route sheet, which identify the type of container at each location along with the number of weekly pick-ups. We then compare the route sheets with the billing records to make sure each customer pays for the exact service they receive.
The sanitation and utility billing staffs do an outstanding job in monitoring customer billing and worked hard to produce an accurate audit. They may not win baseball’s Golden Glove Award, but their dedication and sense of responsibility makes them all-stars in customer service.
Cathy Stark | Office Manager
