Douglasville-Douglas County Water and Sewer Authority (WSA) serves roughly 48,000 accounts across a diverse customer base, spanning different ages, income levels, and comfort with technology. That diversity is exactly why WSA’s path to more than 95% paperless enrollment matters to any utility organization evaluating a digital-first bill payment platform.
Namely, how did its vendor-led adoption strategy shift most of their customer base away from paper bills?
WSA’s digital adoption story gives a great, real-life example of what paperless and digital adoption rates are realistic with a payments partner that offers ongoing success and adoption services rather than just software.
The Starting Point: Live on the Platform, Underusing It
WSA had already been working with InvoiceCloud before the numbers took off. Tony Rea, Customer Service Manager and the driving force behind the initiative, describes the early days with InvoiceCloud plainly: “We kind of scratched the iceberg, but we weren’t quite there yet.”
Online payment services were in place, but paperless billing hadn’t caught on, and digital adoption had plateaued well below what the platform could support.
Getting past that plateau took more than turning on a paperless option and waiting. Tony calls it “a culture change,” for staff and for residents alike. But the WSA team was ready to realize their platform’s full potential. When new leadership arrived and decided to pursue marketing efforts with InvoiceCloud’s Adoption Growth Services team, they found employees ready for it.
“Most of them came to me and said it was about time,” Tony recalls.
Which Utility Billing Systems Support a Digital-First Customer Experience
Municipal and utility billing platforms vary widely in how much of the digital-first experience they actually deliver versus promise. The systems that move enrollment numbers share a few traits:
- They connect to the CIS the utility already runs rather than forcing a rebuild
- They offer more than one way to pay (card, bank transfer, text-to-pay, IVR, guest checkout)
- They give residents a low-friction path to switch from paper to digital without visiting an office
WSA’s scaling of InvoiceCloud leaned on all three.
After a seamless integration with WSA’s core systems, the team activated payment options that address a range of customer preferences. Those who prefer to pay via phone call, for example, still had an automated payment line (IVR) available to them.
Residents who wanted to go paperless could do it from a link in an email or a QR code on a magnet. Let’s dig into some of those low-friction tactics the WSA team used to drive their incredible enrollment rates.
The Tactics: Phased, Targeted, and Physical
Rather than one blanket campaign, WSA built its strategy in stages, which is itself an answer to a common question: adoption programs work better as a sequence than a single push.
Phase One |
Phase Two |
| Targeted a specific, already-warm segment: customers registered on InvoiceCloud and paying online periodically, but still receiving paper bills. An email campaign asked them directly to switch to paperless. |
Widened the net, pitching paperless enrollment to the full customer base. This phase is where WSA crossed the 95% mark. |
The QR code magnet turned into the surprise hit. Using InvoiceCloud’s Marketing Resource Center, cashiers began handing residents small magnets, each printed with a QR code and the customer’s account number written on by hand. Residents stick the magnet on the refrigerator, and the code routes straight to their InvoiceCloud payment page. WSA has reordered the magnets three times.
Expanded payment channels rounded out the approach. What started as credit card payments only grew into text alerts and outbound automated calls, giving customers more ways to act on a bill without a trip to the office or a call to a live representative.
This combination mirrors what tends to work across utility payment collection platforms generally: automated payment reminders paired with real self-service options outperform one-size-fits-all mailers because they meet residents where they already are.
What Changed Day to Day
The clearest operational shift shows up in how WSA now handles at-risk accounts.
Staff run outbound calls to roughly 100 customers a week scheduled for disconnection and at risk of landing in collections. Twenty to 25% pay as a direct result of the call, an outcome staff credit to routing customers straight to an automated payment line instead of taking the payment by hand.
That single change freed staff from processing payments themselves and let them spend the call on the conversation that actually needs a person.
“There’s less stress on our staff,” Tony says, and credits the exposure of their expanded payment options as the driving factor. Fewer checks and cash at the counter, more volume moving through electronic bill payment services day to day.
The Vendor-Led Adoption Strategy: Why Adoption Services Differ from Customer Success
A standard customer success relationship checks in periodically and fixes what breaks. Ongoing, white-glove partnership after go-live — which InvoiceCloud provides — is a completely different vendor relationship.
This means InvoiceCloud billers are enabled with a Marketing Resource Center full of customizable promotional materials and ready-to-launch campaigns. It means hands-on support for building the specific outreach that actually moves enrollment numbers and turns into cost savings.
WSA’s advice to other utilities weighing a similar move: pick a vendor that’s responsive, proactive, and willing to walk you through everything from implementation to marketing, instead of handing over a login and disappearing. That’s the gap between a bill payment platform that sits idle after go-live and one that keeps paying off years later.
Results Utilities Can Benchmark Against
WSA’s headline number, more than 95% paperless enrollment, sits at the high end of what a structured program can reach, and it tracks with what other utilities running comparable campaigns on the same online payment platform have reported: paperless enrollment climbing into the high nineties, alongside steady gains in self-service adoption over a program’s first year.
What makes WSA’s number useful as a benchmark is the mechanism behind it:
- A segmented email campaign, starting with engaged customers and moving outward
- A physical payment reminder (like QR code magnets) that cost little to produce
- Omnichannel payment options added in stages
For utilities and municipalities asking what a realistic paperless or digital payment adoption target looks like, WSA’s answer is 95%, and the path there is repeatable. Find the warm segment first, then expand.
To hear WSA’s full story right from the team, watch their case study video below.