How Kissimmee Utility Authority Built Self-Service That Preserves Customer Dignity

What began in 2018 as a capital project to modernize metering, including a customer portal, is now a self-service hub built around how Kissimmee Utility Authority (KUA) customers actually behave. Almost 80% have used the portal for bill presentment, payment, consumption, and self-help customer service, and 96.1% of portal users are satisfied.

The Challenge

A Flood of New Meter Data, and No Place for Customers to See It

In 2018, Kissimmee Utility Authority (KUA) began rolling out advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). The metering contract came with a requirement attached: give customers a way to see their own consumption. The original plan was to wait about 3 years, until the AMI rollout was further along.

That timeline didn't last. Splitting the experience, with one login to pay a bill and another to see meter consumption, was exactly the kind of friction KUA wanted a portal to remove in the first place. KUA was also growing fast, which meant its customer service reps were absorbing more manual account work every year the utility waited.

The rapid growth from 81,765 meters in 2019 to over 100,000 by the end of 2025 also introduced expectations from customers who were relocating from large utilities where modern self-help features were already in place.

The Solution

Designed for What Jef Gray Calls the "2 a.m. in Your Pajamas" Customer

KUA moved its own timeline, and VertexOne's customer portal went live in 2020, right in the middle of COVID. From the start, the design target was a specific kind of customer: someone who wants to handle their utility business whenever it's convenient for them, the same way they'd order a pizza or shop online at 2 a.m.

Day one covered the basics: view consumption, establish, stop or transfer service, and update contact information. Next came the payment gateway, a heavy lift on its own: integrating an existing payments partner across 100,000 accounts, including migration of their established wallet functionality, so paying a bill and checking usage finally lived in one place.

New-account signup became a major efficiency gain. Customers can now submit their lease or ID paperwork directly in the portal, and it flows into KUA's CIS automatically overnight, work that reps previously re-keyed by hand each morning.

The feature that drew the most favorable response from KUA's board, however, was self-service payment assistance.

Customers who need more time to pay a bill can check their own eligibility for a payment extension in the portal, no call required. "There's a certain amount of embarrassment that comes with asking for more time to pay," Manny Ortega, KUA's board chairman, said when the feature was announced. "When someone has spent their entire life paying their bills on time, especially a senior, being able to help them through a difficult time while preserving their dignity means so much. After all, it can happen to anyone." Taking the call out of the process takes the embarrassment out too.

KUA also found a use for VertexOne's customer portal that had nothing to do with billing. Physical bill-stuffer mailers meant ordering, cutting, printing, and stuffing envelopes every cycle, real cost and staff time for something most customers dropped straight in the trash. The portal's landing page, the first thing every customer sees on the way to pay a bill, replaced that entirely, now carrying movie-in-the-park events, hurricane guides, and board recruitment at zero marginal cost per message. The landing page images can also be clicked for more detail and interaction.

The portal serves as a single point of notification when messaging needs to reach all customers. For example, during tax season many customers receive their refunds via a debit card from their tax service. Those cards do not allow utility payments, which generated confusion and calls to the utility. By placing a custom message on the portal, KUA made customers aware of the limitation before the frustration of a failed payment occurred.

KUA's newest addition is e-FlexPay, a prepay option for customers who would otherwise owe a deposit. The portal calculates a real-time, prorated bill amount on demand, what KUA's team calls "the magic number." Consumption alerts and the flexibility of viewing data in kWh or dollars resonate with customers who think in cost.

The Results

A Portal Customers Use on Their Own Terms, and a Board That Noticed

"If VertexOne's customer portal did not exist, we would have had to create it. There's nobody else we saw who had that whole suite of offerings in the box, ready to go on day one."

-Jef Gray, VP of IT, Kissimmee Utility Authority

• Dignity-first self-service, at scale. About 40% of KUA's customers needing an extension have used automated payment-arrangement qualification, checking their own eligibility for more time to pay without ever picking up the phone.
• Call volume declined while KUA grew. More of KUA's routine account activity, from payment-arrangement qualification to consumption alerts, now happens in the portal instead of over the phone. Paired with online chat, the experience is self-driven, with help just a click away on the same screen.
• A gentler alternative to a deposit. KUA's new e-FlexPay prepay option gives customers building or rebuilding credit a way to move in without a large upfront deposit, calculating a real-time bill each session, with few customers leaving the program once enrolled.
• Bill-stuffer costs, avoided. KUA replaced physical bill-stuffer mailers, and the printing, cutting, and mailing costs that came with them, with its portal's landing page, now a free, always-on, clickable channel for movie-in-the-park announcements, hurricane guides, and board recruitment.
• Bill shock, replaced with a heads-up. Customers set their own usage alerts, so the bill confirms what they already know.
• Increased eBill adoption. New portal registrants are automatically opted into e-bill, with the option to opt out. That default alone has pushed e-bill enrollment to 80% of KUA's customers.
• Independently rated customer satisfaction. 96.1% of portal users are satisfied, beating the Florida public-power average by 26 points. Nine in ten say they can complete every task they need in the portal, up 3.7 percentage points from 2025.

Looking Ahead

KUA's next priority is closing the gap that's left in its signup process. Today, a new customer's credit check and deposit decision can still mean a callback the next day. KUA's goal is a fully automated flow that resolves both in the same session, a fast path for customers who don't owe a deposit and a separate path for those who do, so every new customer knows exactly where they stand before they log off.

VertexOne's customer portal has already brought billing, consumption, payment help, community messaging, and prepay together for KUA.

Ready to give customers self-service that respects their dignity? See how VertexOne's customer portal turns routine tasks into moments customers handle on their own.

See the customer portal