AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Austin Water selected WaterSmart – a VertexOne Brand to provide customers with an easy-to-use online and mobile Customer Portal. This program is a complement to Austin Water’s water meter network upgrade to advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), known as My ATX Water. WaterSmart’s platform will give the utility and its 1 million residents powerful new capabilities, including notifications for possible leaks and high bills, and more detailed consumption analytics to help the city manage resources more effectively.
“Austin Water prides itself on finding innovative ways to better serve our customers and we are excited to make this service available so our customers can experience the full benefits of our investment in AMI,” said Chris Stewart, Chief Information Officer. Austin Water, which has been a trusted and reliable water provider to the city of Austin for over 100 years, is the latest of over 150 utilities to adopt the company’s software-as-a-service customer engagement solution.
“We’re excited to work with WaterSmart and Aclara to provide our customers with ways to be more engaged in managing their own water use,” remarked Stewart.
As part of the program, residential and commercial customers and property owners will have access to WaterSmart’s Customer Portal. There, customers can receive personalized information about their water use and how it compares to similar properties, leak alerts and high bill notifications, customized water-saving recommendations, up-to-date news, and rebates from Austin Water. In addition, customers will receive periodic Water Reports that give deep insights into water use, provide personalized water-saving recommendations, and allow customers to compare their water use to similar households in Austin. Those in Austin Water’s Customer Assistance Program (CAP) will also receive this information plus water reports and leak alerts via print mail.
"Austin Water is excited to launch this new tool. It is a key strategy in our ongoing commitment to improve the overall customer experience. In addition to enhancing communications, it will serve our community by increasing the visibility of daily water use, helping Austin reduce water waste and better protect our precious resource,” said Randi Jenkins, Assistant Director, Customer Experience.
"VertexOne is thrilled to bring the WaterSmart technology to the customers of Austin Water,” said Andrew Jornod, CEO of VertexOne. “The WaterSmart program has helped utilities throughout the nation implement AMI while giving their customers the same level of online self-service they have come to expect from other service providers. We anticipate that Austin Water will achieve the same impressive results,” added Jornod.
About Austin Water
For over 100 years, Austin Water has been committed to providing safe, reliable, high-quality and affordable water services to our customers. Today, we serve over 1,000,000 people in the Austin metropolitan area, across more than 548 square miles.
The utility draws water from the Colorado River into three regional water treatment plants, Handcox, Davis, and Ullrich, which have a combined capacity of 335 million gallons per day.
Austin Water has two wastewater treatment plants, Walnut Creek and South Austin Regional, that can receive up to 150 million gallons per day of sewage to treat. Wastewater is cleaned into high-quality effluent that is safely returned to the Colorado River to augment environmental flows. More than a billion gallons of this high-quality effluent are reclaimed each year for outdoor irrigation, industrial cooling, manufacturing and other uses.
For more information, visit austinwater.org.
About WaterSmart – a VertexOne Brand
VertexOne is a recognized leader in SaaS applications for the critical business processes of utilities across North America. Through a wide range of innovative services and solutions—including the VertexOne™️ cloud platform comprised of CIS, MWM, MDM, and Customer Self Service—VertexOne helps utilities more efficiently deliver a compelling customer experience while also driving utility operations forward. VertexOne takes on the heavy lifting of keeping current with the rapid pace of technology changes, so utilities don't have to—leaving our customers more time to focus on core utility business while leaving the technology to us. For more information, visit https://www.vertexone.net.
WaterSmart is the most-proven cloud-based customer engagement and analytics platform for water utilities. The WaterSmart Program helps utilities engage with their customers at key moments to save money and resources by nudging them to adopt online self-service, go paperless, and save water. WaterSmart has grown to over 150 utility customers of all sizes across the U.S. and Canada and manages data for over 4 million meters in AMI, AMR, Manual, and mixed meter environments. WaterSmart has been proven to reduce costs, protect revenue, and increase customer satisfaction by more than 25%. WaterSmart was one of just 30 companies worldwide to receive the coveted 2016 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers Award.
