Great service is their goal

When someone moves to Granbury, perhaps their first contact with city government is via the utility billing department. For anyone who purchases a house, rents an apartment, or acquires a piece of property, getting the utilities turned on is essential.

Sharee Lowe, department manager, is adamant that she and her staff make sure that first contact is a positive one.

“We understand our office might be the one chance to make a good first impression about our city and we take great pride in not only providing top notch customer service, but also, to make people feel welcome,” she said.

Whether it is answering questions about Granbury or providing informative literature supplied by Visit Granbury, newcomers are quickly updated about the many activities and things to do in Granbury and made to feel like part of the community.

Getting utility service turned on quickly and efficiently is important, but making sure a customer’s billing is accurate and the payment process is easy and convenient, is also essential.

Lowe stated, “We strive to continuously build positive customer experiences and to offer the tools and technology to keep our customers informed and satisfied. We have increased our efficiency and are able to offer customers multiple ways to transact their business, whether it be online, in person, pay by phone, online payment or auto bank draft.”

Along with many self-serve options, utility billing has an AMI smart meter portal available through the city’s website (granbury.org) where customers can log in and track their water usage hour-by-hour. This same type of monitoring system is being put in place for electric usage.

These systems are designed to keep customers informed about how much service they are using, and where they might choose to cut back and save.

Customers can also sign up to receive a text message or email notification when their usage crosses a designated threshold; giving the customer a chance to act before they accumulate a large bill in the case of a leaking pipe, broken sprinkler head or other extreme usage.

Utility billing even offers free toilet testing kits to customers to allow them to diagnose situations when they might be needlessly wasting water and incurring additional expense.

Serving over 6,000 water accounts, 3,500 electric customers and 7,000 combined accounts, the utility billing staff includes Leslie Green and Emily Willis, and has not increased in size even while serving a growing number of consumers and offering a higher level of customer services than ever before.

Lowe proudly proclaims the city continually monitors utility rates with other similar sized cities in north Texas and finds Granbury is consistently at or below average with comparable cities.

sam@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext.260