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municipalauthorities.org | 11 reach customers with the important message. The use of this campaign contributed to the attainment of our goal to enroll a total of 8,000 customers in the Bill Discount Program by 2024 year end. (See Figure 1.) • In September 2024, we launched an email campaign to promote paperless billing. This campaign petitioned existing customer advantage portal enrollees to consider adopting paperless billing. The drivers of this campaign were, 1) to launch new functionality of the portal, referred to as communication advantage, and 2) to reduce postage costs for the benefit of our customer base. Over four weeks, we achieved a less than 2% paperless conversion rate; however, we gained 468 additional paperless billing customers. An ancillary benefit to this communication was the enrollment in autopay by 570 of the customers who we contacted during this campaign. (See Figure 2.) • In November 2024, we initiated payment plan email and text messaging campaigns. Our target audience is past due residential customers. Our goal is to encourage our customers to contact us to determine if they are eligible for a payment plan. We also created a billing system data reporting mechanism to discern the success rate of these additional communications. (See Figure 3.) While too early to tell how successful the payment plan email and text messaging campaigns are for Pittsburgh Water and our customers, we have only begun to explore the ways in which we could tailor proactive communication to promote our customer- centric programs and tools. Borrowing from our core value of equity, “We strive to deliver quality and affordable water services to every community in our service area….” Proactive, individualized customer communication has the potential to strengthen that delivery. We welcome the opportunity to connect with other municipal authorities to share more about Pittsburgh Water’s journey and to hear your strategies on improving the customer experience! S Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Julie A. Mechling has 35 years of experience in the water/wastewater/ stormwater utility billing industry. Julie rejoined Pittsburgh Water in October 2017. She spearheaded critical reforms and technological innovations, including cloud-based applications for incoming customer call tracking and recording, service/work order processing, and designing and implementing a suite of progressive customer assistance programs. About Pittsburgh Water: Pittsburgh Water is the largest publicly owned and operated water, sewer, and stormwater authority in Pennsylvania. Serving around 500,000 customers in the city of Pittsburgh and borough of Millvale, our organization treats and distributes drinking water, conveys wastewater, and manages stormwater systems. Pittsburgh Water is committed to protecting public health and the environment through the advancement of key infrastructure projects that will transform our vital water systems now and for future generations.