[Darlene Douglas]

WE ARE GOING TO COMMENCE SMS REMINDERS AT KEMPSEY SHIRE COUNCIL – WE ARE FINDING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR OUR CUSTOMER SERVICES DEPARTMENT TO CAPTURE THIS INFORMATION- HAS ANYONE COMMENCED THIS AND WAS THERE A MAJIC WAY OF GETTING MOBILE NUMBERS

[Carla Mete]

Hi Darlene,
How is your sms reminders going two years later? SCC is now sending SMS reminders. We implemented this about six months ago. We use our print house PML to capture the information for us. The customer can register for rates by email or sms reminders though our council website. They must agree to the terms and conditions (i.e that it is their responsibility to enter the correct mobile number and they have the responsibility to adjust the registration should their mobile number change etc.). Our Customer Services staff do not play a role in our process at all.

I am happy to discuss in more depth in your still require this information.

[Cindy Allan]

Afternoon Carla. With the increase in delays of mail delivery this is a brilliant option. Do you have a procedure and or policy?

[Darlene Douglas]

Good morning 2 years on and we are still trying to get Council staff to ask for a mobile number when talking to a ratepayer and updating their details on our property system. This is really frustrating!!
Do you have a form that can be completed. Unfortunately we do not have a portal for our ratepayers and we are changing systems in the next few year and we will hopefully have a portal for all to use

[Carla Mete]

When a customer calls your Council does your phone system capture the number they are calling from? We will update a customer NAR number this way. For our ‘Rates By Email’ or ‘SMS Reminders’ however, we do not take any responsibility in recording this data ourselves. It is in the Terms and Conditions when they register. We do not have a policy for this as there is no need. We do reconcile our records against our print house registrations to ensure we have all those registered for email and/or sms coded in our system. It might sound complicated but it is in fact quite easy.
Below is our Terms and Conditions;
Terms and Conditions

1.Council will no longer mail paper Rates, Instalment, or Reminder notices to you, or any person to whom paper notices for the nominated property were previously sent.
2.All future Rates, Instalment, or Reminder notices will be in the form of a PDF attachment to an email sent to the address nominated by you.
3.You must advise any other person to whom the paper Rates, Instalment, or Reminder notices are currently being sent that they will no longer receive a paper Rates, Instalment , or Reminder notices as a result of your request. Council will not be responsible for providing this notification.
4.You must check your nominated email address for Rates and Instalment notices before the respective payment due dates of 31 August, 30 November, 28 February and 31 May.
5.You must check your nominated email address for notices before the respective payment due dates of mid September, mid December, mid March and mid June.
6.You agree that you are deemed to have received the email when it reaches your internet service provider, whether or not you have opened or read the email.
7.You agree that you will retain the Rates, Instalment, or Reminder notice information yourself electronically or by printing it. Council will not reissue notices that have been emailed.
8.You can withdraw your request for email delivery of Rates, Instalment, or Reminder notices at any time by deregistering on Council’s website.
9.You are responsible for keeping your email address up to date with Council. If you change your email address you must deregister and reregister with your new details.
10.The delivery of Rates, Instalment, or Reminder notices via email will be cancelled if any owner of the nominated property or their authorised agent requests cancellation.
11.Upon withdrawal or cancellation of the email delivery service, Council will commence sending paper Rates, Instalment, or Reminder notices to the last advised mailing address for that property.
12.If Council receives a ‘bounce-back’ notification from your email address, a paper Rates, Instalment, or Reminder notice will be sent to your last advised mailing address for the property. If two or more consecutive ‘bounce-backs’ occur, Council may cancel the request for email delivery of Rates, Instalment, or Reminder notices for that property. An ‘out of office’ notification will not be considered a ‘bounce-back’ notification.
13.In the event that debt recovery is required on either rates or install accounts, these notices will be posted to the last recorded mailing address for that property.

Using an ‘out of office’ or similar notification for change of email address will not be deemed sufficient to have advised Council for a change of email address as Rates, Instalment or Overdue notices are sent from a mailing house and not directly from Council.

PLEASE NOTE: by registering to receive notices by email, this will only apply to all future notices. Council is unable to email any previous notices to you.

PRIVACY NOTE

Council will collect and hold the personal information contained in the application for the purpose of processing the application. The intended recipients of the personal information are officers within Council. The supply of personal information by you is voluntary, however, if you cannot provide, or do not wish to provide the information sought, Council may be unable to process your application.

You may make an application for access or amendments to your personal information held by Council under the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 (PPIP Act) or the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (GIPA Act). You may also make a request that Council suppress your personal information from a public register. Council will consider any such application in accordance with the PIPP Act.

Information provided to Council in correspondence, submissions or requests, including your personal information, may be made publicly available, including on Council’s website, under the GIPA Act. Please notify us if you object to the disclosure of your personal information.

[Darryl Telfer]

Hi Carla.

Does PML wash your print file data against the SMS/Email registry and send by those channels where customers are registered? Or do you capture the mobile number/email address against the assessment and include the details in the print file data?

Also, how do you manage email bounce backs?

Sorry for the 20 questions but thanks in advance.

[Carla Mete]

Hi Darryl,
I am happy to help, so I will answer your questions as best I can. Our print file data extract has not change by implementing rates by email and sms reminders.

A ratepayer who wants to register for either email or sms has to go to SCC website then click on “Rates”. Here we have our general rates information and the link for registration. If you want to take a look copy and paste this into your web browser:

http://www.shellharbour.nsw.gov.au/Home.aspx

The ratepayer then has to click on the “Email By Rates” button at the top middle of the page. This takes them to the registrations page that our print house PML has set up for us. The registrations are managed by PML, similarly to our BPay View registrations. We looked at managing the registrations in house but the job seemed more than our small team could handle. Extracting a file and sending to PML was an option, but the more complicated option. And as PML had the capabilities to managed the registrations on our behalf we went with them and I haven’t been disappointed.

All SMS registrations come to us to approve, so we then record the mobile number against the owners NAR. Email registrations are approved automatically if they enter the correct data i.e. the names as they appear exactly on a rates notice etc. if they do not match 100% details then it comes to us to review and either approve or deactivated. Even those that did get approved automatically I review the registrations every day or every two days and if the email address does not use the owners name in the email address I will call the owners to discuss the email address and act accordingly. Again, through this registration, we record the email addresses against the NAR.

After every Instalment, Reminder/Final notices are emailed, PML send me an email report. This report shows if the rates were successfully delivered or if they failed. We have a rule set that if the email fails, depending on the reason why it failed, we deactivate the registration and the rates notice then is posted in the mail. We also attempt to call the owner to advise that the email failed.

[Mary Klower]

Hi Darlene

We have been using SMS reminders prior to legal action for a few years now it is a very simple progam and I will get Abie or Sam in Debt Recovery to give you a ring.
Mary

[Darlene Douglas]

thank you Mary 🙂

[Author]

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