Designing Your Reconnection Procedures
If a customer pays for a service agreement after the service has been cut for non-payment AND BEFORE THE SA HAS BEEN EXPIRED, they need to be reconnected. Counter-intuitively, you must set up a severance process to initiate the field activities to reconnect service.
Why do you use a severance process to reconnect service? Because a severance process is nothing more than a series of events that take place one after another. Some of the events create field activities, others send letters, others create To Do entries. So, why not use a severance process? You just have to send different letters and perform different field activities.
The system will automatically create a reconnection process if a severance process is cancelled as a result of a payment (or other credits). Please note that this will only happen if you plug-in the appropriate post cancellation algorithm on your severance process templates. Refer to What Happens When A Severance Process Is Cancelled? for more information.
While you don't define the reconnect procedures for an SA type, we recommend you think about the reconnection steps for each of your SA types that can be disconnected for nonpayment. We've completed the sample matrix with some characteristic events.
|
SA Type |
Steps |
|
Electric Residential |
Create a reconnect service field activity. Immediately after completion of the reconnect, send a letter to the customer. |
|
Electric Commercial |
Create a reconnect service field activity. Immediately after completion of the reconnect, send a letter to the customer. |
|
Gas Residential |
Create a reconnect service field activity. Immediately after completion of the reconnect, send a letter to the customer. |
|
Gas Commercial |
Create a reconnect service field activity. Immediately after completion of the reconnect, send a letter to the customer. |
Once the matrix is complete, you determine the severance process templates needed to implement your reconnection procedures. Notice each SA type has the same reconnection steps. This means you just need one severance process. The following table shows this severance process template and its events.
|
Severance Process Template |
Event Number |
Severance Event Template |
Dependent On Event(s) |
Trigger Date Set To X Days After Completion Of Dependent Events |
|
Reconnect |
10 |
Field activity - reconnect service |
N/A - first event |
0 |
|
20 |
Service has been reconnected letter |
10 |
0 |
If we extract each unique severance event type from the above table, we end up with the following:
|
Severance Event Template |
Event Type |
|
Reconnect |
Generate Field Activity - Reconnect |
|
Service has been reconnected letter |
Send Letter |
The field activity types are NOT specified directly on the severance event type. Why? Because each service point linked to the service agreement being severed could necessitate a different type of field activity. Therefore, the system uses the type of service point, its state (e.g., connected, meter is off.) and the desired customer event (e.g., Disconnect Warning, Cut For Non-Payment) to determine which field activity type(s) to generate. Refer to Setting Up Field Activity Type Profiles for how to set up the specific disconnect field activity types for your various types of service points.
If you want the system to automatically create a reconnection process if a customer pays after they have been cut, you must specify the appropriate post cancellation algorithm on your severance process templates.
And now you're ready to set up your severance (and reconnection) procedures.