Payment "air time" reduction is money in the bank for Atmos and its customers Atmos Energy Corporation speeds payment posting via MasterCard RPPS Speaking before the MasterCard RPPS 2006 Customer Conference and Industry Symposium, Jerry Murray, director, Payment Applications, Atmos Energy Corporation, put it bluntly: 'We were not doing electronic payments very well.' In the highly regulated energy industry, this could create problems, especially for a company now doing business with more than 3.2 million customers in 12 states. Customers expect that payments they send electronically in the morning are received by the utility that day, and once they hit the 'pay' button, they do not expect to find their power shut off for lack of payment. Regulators wanted those payments to be posted within 24 hours. Wanting to improve customer service by reducing payment 'air time,' the time payments spend 'floating in air' before they land in the bank, Murray's group chose to partner with MasterCard RPPS two years ago. The partnership yielded dramatic improvements in performance (see the spring 2006 edition of RPPS Update), including quicker turnaround on payment posting, faster funds availability, and the desired improvement in customer service that flowed from speedier posting of consumer payments. On August 28, 2006, Atmos took its performance to a new level of efficiency when it began receiving payments via multiple payment cycles from MasterCard RPPS. 'If a customer goes out to their [bank's bill payment] Web site, and they are looking to make a payment to Atmos Energy today—if they pay that payment at 10:00 a.m., then the next time those payments are processed through MasterCard RPPS, we get those payments within an hour,' said Murray. 'Somebody said to me [this morning], 'There's no way to get it same-day.' Well, we get it same-day,' he added. Customer payments at noncontracted walk-in locations also come through MasterCard RPPS in the same way. Faster posting, better customer service Quicker payment posting improves customer service by helping Atmos avoid delinquency shutoffs. When a customer's service gets turned off despite a timely electronic payment, Murray noted, it creates a customer service nightmare. Now, with multiple payment cycles, as soon as a payment is received by Atmos, 'any delinquency action on that account gets stopped immediately,' Murray said. 'The next time [the service rep] refreshes his screen inside his service truck, that service order is gone.' In fact, since August 28, Atmos has received nearly 49,000 payments from customers who otherwise would have faced immediate shutoff or notification of shutoff. With shutoffs costing Atmos $65 and service restoration costing $110, avoiding unnecessary shutoffs has had a significantly positive impact on the bottom line and on customer relations. In addition, service representatives who would otherwise have spent their time shutting off customers could be reallocated to more productive projects. Single connection, multiple advantages The single connection to MasterCard RPPS delivers payments from multiple sources—from banks' online payment services to walk-in providers—all consolidated into one traffic channel for Atmos. Better account number validation up front dramatically reduces exception items—and their costly resolution. MasterCard RPPS validates account numbers against Atmos's check-digit routines to ensure the delivery of correct data. Atmos never sees transactions with incorrect numbers, which get bounced back to the originator for correction, saving tremendous time and resources on exception processing. Out of almost 98,000 payments that passed the routine in the first 10 days Atmos was accepting multiple payments, only 16 had to be returned.* 'This is a testament to the power of the MasterCard RPPS network and what it will do for you,' Murray said. 'It absolutely has been a winner for us.' * The account numbers combine an unchanging customer number and a seven-digit code for the customer's physical address. These 16 combinations failed to match those in Atmos's system, possibly due to the customers moving. RPPS Update Newsletter Main Back to Top