Managing the Customer Experience during Combined Sewer Overflows

The customer experience of sewage overflows can be awful

Sewer overflows are a nightmare for both residents and municipal sewer operators. While operators face reports, fines, and angry stakeholders, residents endure the worst of the fallout. Residents don’t care about the root causes—whether it’s aging infrastructure, heavy rainfall, population changes, insufficient employee coverage, or some combination of these factors. What matters to residents is the disruption: flooded homes, ruined belongings, polluted water, and emotional stress. Each overflow erodes residents’ trust, reminding them that their utilities are failing them.

What’s the fix for Combined Sewer Overflows?

Replacing outdated systems with separate pipes might sound like the obvious fix, but it’s a long, expensive road. In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated it would take $271 billion over 20 years to upgrade wastewater infrastructure in the U.S.

And while construction drags on, customers are left to deal with torn-up neighborhoods, disrupted routines, and more of the same problems they’ve been facing for years. For most municipalities, starting their infrastructure from scratch is too costly, and doesn’t meet the immediate needs of their communities.

Better CSO/SSO Management, better customer experiences

Solving for CSOs won’t take care of any and all issues municipal sewer operators have with their customers; the customer experience is bigger than that. Still, reducing CSO events means that customers have fewer complaints to make to friends or online and more gratitude for you when you communicate how you’re working to prevent sewer overflows.

Remote analytics for the win

So, how can sewer operators deliver real overflow results for their customers now?

Most municipal sewage organizations have sensors in place to let them know when there are changes happening in their sewers, such as changes in flow, water level, pressure, and more. However, just like municipalities don’t have the funds to replace all their aging pipes with shiny new infrastructure, they often don’t have the money to send engineers down to manholes to manually collect this important data. Even if they did have the money, by the time organizations get the data from a manual collection, it may be too late to prevent the overflow.

Enter remote monitoring and analytics.

Instead of waiting for engineers to come collect data, the sensors placed throughout sewer systems send real-time data through a data logger to a central platform. Alerts are triggered as soon as pre-set thresholds within the platform are crossed, enabling operators to take immediate action. They can open or close gates to redirect sewage away from overburdened pipes, preventing overflows and protecting the system from costly failures.

The result?

Customers stay happier and more confident in their municipal sewage when they know their basements and neighborhoods are safer. Rivers and lakes remain clean and accessible, enhancing community quality of life and protecting the environment (another thing customers care about). And municipalities build stronger relationships with the people they serve by proving they’re invested in conservation and their residents’ well-being.

When these efforts to reduce CSOs are communicated right by sewer service providers, and when customers see that these events are happening less frequently, the customer experience can change for the better.

Remote monitoring and analytics offer the tools to make this transformation, helping customers stay dry, safe, and satisfied—no matter what the weather brings.