The vendor is required to provide overdue billing and payment servicing solution services for the facilitation of the collection and payment of overdue utility bills.
- Program development and modeling:
- Design and build a proposed solution to cause delinquent in paying customers a mechanism to pay overdue bills through a strategy that directly communicates to the customer and provides a mechanism to cause customers to resolve their utility charges; the modeling should include:
• Communication scenarios
oDevelop scenarios and test for most effective communication channels
oDeploy trained model based on scenario results
• Data quality/cleansing
oValidation customers’ bill payment status prior to outreach
oAbility to identify and/or address data issues in the communication channel
• Implementation
oUsing historical billing data, develop the model against agency customer behaviors
oRefine the model via targeted variations impacting customer behavior
oThrough the model, the best strategy solution is determined
• Define roles, cooperation
oSpecify the roles and responsibilities required to support the determined model
- Data collection results and analysis
- Test the proposed model on a subset of agency customers to gauge response.
- Vendor to provide analytics of model tests for documenting results including forecasts on the ability to reduce overdue bills; activities include but are not limited to:
•Run scenarios, small groups testing
•Analyze behavior
•Make incremental changes for ‘tweaking’ the model
- Modeling refinement to agency customer response
- The model test results, refine the model to increase customer awareness through a customized communication strategy and payment alternatives that promote overdue bill reduction; elements of the deployed strategy could include:
•Communication methodology strategy
oTime of reminder
oCommunication channel
oTone of voice
•Billing/payment alternatives strategy
oE-bill adoption
oPayment of bill
oTake rate on payment arraignments (agency offerings as well as any additional vendor-propose payment plan)
- Implementation
- Based on the model testing results, deploy the solution across the agency portfolio refining through:
•launch model beyond test groups (incrementally or full, vendor recommendation requested)
•develop and align agency-centric process flows
•On a regular basis (≈ every 9-12 months) reassess the model for enhancement
- Reports and/or administrative dashboard
- Systemic methodology for the monitoring of solution activity; parameters could include:
•Communication activity
•Payment methodology take rate
•Financial results of overdue debt collection