City of Stanford Waterworks launches customer service app

Published 10:25 am Thursday, May 2, 2019

STANFORD — City of Stanford Waterworks customers no longer have to rely on the radio, newspaper or television to learn of boil water advisories, water leaks, water or sewer construction area alerts, hydrant flushing dates, etc.

On Monday, April 29, the local utility, which serves approximately 3,000 customers, launched a new app which will send out instant notifications. The SWWAdvisory app can be downloaded for free from the App Store.

While the method of posting alerts on its website has worked in the past, Stanford Waterworks wished to have a more direct method of contact with its customers.

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“We just wanted to get something that would help notify our customers for leaks, construction areas … just to kind of allow them to have more (information) available,” said Shanna True, City of Stanford Waterworks office manager. “Everyone can start downloading it and using it now.
We’ve included a little note on our bills that will kind of notify them that they can download it and we’ve put notices in the window as well.”

Currently, waterworks customers can pay their bills online using the utility’s website, but now they will also be able to pay via the SWWAdvisory app.

“They can pay on our website, but being that there is another website that looks very similar to ours, we wanted to add that to our app,” True said. “That way customers would be able to go straight to our website and not get confused by the different website. So that they would be paying on the correct one.”

The link to the utility’s online bill pay website is in the upper right hand corner of the app. It shows a dollar sign ($) with the words Bill Pay underneath it. Using the bill-pay service does include a service fee of $2.25.

True said the City of Stanford Waterworks feels the new app will be helpful to its customers.

“I think we’re also going to use it to post reminders of when bills are due, shutoffs and things like that,” she said. “It will just kind of give customers a little more insight on what’s going on. That way they’re not having to call down here. We can blast it out and they’ll know immediately.”