San Diego Water Officials Use Tech to Fix Long Hold Times, Billing Errors

San Diego’s notoriously bad customer service and billing for sewer and water customers is dramatically improving thanks to new software, more employees and shifting priorities.

Hours-long customer-service hold times have shrunk to a record-low 69 seconds on average, while significantly fewer customers are getting hit with surprise cumulative bills as high as $2,000.

The remarkable results come less than two years after city officials made sweeping changes that include a new billing system, switching customer service software to Amazon Connect, new call routing and more payment options.

The city also created a new policy requiring employees to alert customers when their bill is being withheld for a leak investigation or other irregularities. The alerts aim to eliminate the surprise to customers when they eventually get gigantic cumulative bills for many months of past service all at once. That was happening because the city stops billing a customer when it launches an investigation into an unusual meter reading.

Because those investigations were sometimes taking months to complete, customers could eventually get hit with cumulative bills as high as $2,000 or more with no warning.

But since all the changes, the backlog of cases has shrunk from nearly 25,000 to about 2,400. And a smaller backlog means cases get investigated and resolved more quickly, making outrageously large bills far less common.

“It was difficult to wait over the years, but the results are frankly unbelievable,” Council President Joe LaCava told Public Utilities Department officials Monday.

Councilmember Marni von Wilpert said the changes have sharply shrunk the number of complaints she gets from residents about long hold times and billing problems.

“We had a hard time even finding complaints,” von Wilpert said. “Thank so much for taking these concerns seriously.”

She said problems with a water bill can create major anxiety for people.

“People are panicked when they can’t get a hold of the Water Department because they think they might get shut off,” von Wilpert said.

But the changes come with a price. The new software, the new hires and large pay raises given to city employees all play a role in city plans to cumulatively raise rates 70% over the next few years. The main drivers of those proposed rate hikes, however, are infrastructure projects and increases in what the city must pay the County Water Authority for imported water in coming years.

Customer service representatives were among the many city workers awarded raises totaling 23% over three years during labor contract negotiations in spring 2023.

Council members gave much of the credit for the remarkable turnaround on billing problems and hold times to Michelle Costello, who was hired one year ago after 20 years working on customer service at San Diego Gas & Electric.

Costello, deputy director of public utilities, said she and her staff won’t get complacent.

“It’s very easy to think we’ve checked the box and we’re done,” she said. “We really have to have this continuous-improvement mindset.”

Next steps include upgrading the city’s My Water SD web portal, making it easier for customers to change their address and giving delinquent customers a chance to pay their debt off slowly.

Costello said the city’s software has the capability to spread debt over 18 equal payments.

Von Wilpert said some delinquent accounts owe large sums to the city because they are commercial customers or other government agencies, but she declined to provide specifics.

Another key moving forward is shifting all of the city’s nearly 300,000 meters to smart meters, which is expected to make billing more accurate and efficient.

Many of the changes were prompted by a 2018 city audit.

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