Each month, a utility bill arrives in your mailbox without much fanfare. Yet there’s a team
behind the process ensuring a smooth, accurate billing cycle each month for utility services. Meet its leader, Caryn Dachner. Caryn’s responsibility and oversight of Utility Billing, a division within the Finance Department, is focused on efficiency, accuracy and excellence, particularly when it comes to customer service.
Where are you from originally?
I grew up in a suburb of Chicago called Worth and moved to Columbus in 1979.
What’s your professional background? How did you come to your position at the City of Westerville?
After teaching on the secondary level for five years in Addison, Ill., I accepted a position with an investor-owned water and sewer utility in the Columbus area. I stayed there for 12 years before coming to the City of Westerville in 1998.
What is a typical day like in your position?
The first thing I do each morning is verify all transactions from the previous day have settled on the customer accounts and in the general ledger. This process ensures customer information balances with our financial systems. Throughout the day I assist customers and staff to update information based on new charges, adjustments, payments and account maintenance updates. Our department is currently involved in several projects, chiefly related to new software systems. These include advanced metering, a new work order system and billing software. I also serve on several staff committees, including the Advanced Metering Program Project Team, Westerville Customer Service Steering Committee, the Information Security Committee, the Records Retention Committee and the Westerville Safety Committee.
You’ve been a longtime champion of customer service training and professional development for City staff. What’s your customer service philosophy, and how did you develop it?
My endeavor is to continually provide staff with the information, training and resources they will need to assist utility customers and residents of Westerville. When they have these items, it is easy to respond to customer requests in a quick, confident and thorough manner.
You work on customer service initiatives outside the City, including the customer committee for the American Water Works Association. How does that influence your work in Westerville?
For the past several years I have worked with a group of utility supervisors from AWWA-member organizations to provide customer service training opportunities at regional workshops and the state chapter annual conference. I have learned so much from networking with my counterparts throughout Ohio and have implemented many ideas that are shared at our workshops. I have worked hard to foster relationships with other utility professionals and establish Westerville as a resource for others who can benefit from my experience.
In what ways are you looking to the future in terms of how utility billing will change or evolve?
Customers are requesting more ways to access their utility bills online, track their usage patterns, request services and make payments. As we look to implementing new billing software, the technology will be in place to offer easy, accessible ways for our customers to do business with us in ways they find more convenient.
What would Westerville customers be surprised to know about the division?
Residents would probably be surprised to know just how many transactions we handle each month with a very small staff. Each month, we bill more than $6 million in revenues, prepare over 16,800 utility bills, collect 92 percent of our billed revenues, process more than 300 cash transactions at the window and answer about 1,200 phone calls.
What are your interests? What do you like to do in your spare time?
I have been a garden club member for over 35 years and find enjoyment in being outside with my hands in the earth, nurturing plants that provide beautiful blooms. My husband and I have grown sons with families in southern California and Cleveland, so we enjoy visiting them whenever we can. Liesel and Daphne are our beautiful little granddaughters.
