Salt River Project

Salt River Project (SRP), a public electric and water utility in Arizona, has recently upgraded and expanded payment options for its customers. They have converted 50 cashiering workstations in 7 offices to CASHIER for Windows. They have also installed self-service payment terminals (kiosks) in every office for unattended collections.

Tony Moya, Customer Service Supervisor for SRP, said, "CASHIER for Windows helps us speed up the process and it helps us with our customers. We´re able to give customers a receipt with their name, address and account number on it. It gives them a sense of security, and it saves time because it got us away from a manual process that we used to go through."

"The new system also helps us locate any transaction that´s in question with the customer saying they came in on such a date at such and such a time," he said. "We can go back through our records right on-line and be able to go step by step to see what the rep did and be able to explain that to our customer."

Easier Payment Processing

"We also used to have a problem processing irrigation accounts," Mr. Moya continued. "We were having to cross two different accounts. We had to take the irrigation payment and cash it out and then do a separate transaction for the power account. Now with CASHIER for Windows, we have the ease of doing one multiple transaction with two separate categories, which we find ourselves doing quite a bit."

SRP has also installed a Diebold PayStation™ Terminal in each of their offices that customers can use to pay their bills with cash or by check. Four of these terminals have 24-hour access and two, located in grocery stores, have 19-hour access. "We´re still getting our customers aware of them, Mr. Moya said, "but we´ve noticed that once they start to use them, they are repeat customers. We want to be easier, more convenient and more pleasant, of course, than our competition. We plan to put more of these machines across the Valley—probably 18 to 25 more."

PayStation Terminals include a bill counter that reads and counts inserted cash bills; a scanner which reads inserted bills and checks; and a voice prompted touch screen (in English and Spanish). The Terminal also contains a PC that is connected to a Wide Area Network and appropriate storage for the cash and checks that are deposited. They even contain a magnetic stripe card reader and writer to update prepaid power cards for their "Pay As You Go" program.

System Innovators has developed a Payment Router interface to the Payment Terminals. This software application provides account information to the Terminals from their Customer Information System (CIS). It also provides online payment posting from the Terminals back to the CIS.

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