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Within Chesterfield County's Department of Utilities Customer Operations Section, benchmarking has become a standard method for identifying opportunities for improvement and a means of improving service for its customers. Benchmarking has enabled the utility to measure its performance against recognized leaders, enabling it to look for ways to continually achieve improved levels of service, increased standards and measurements, or performance, and measure and promote continuous improvement over the long-term. This paper describes how, in the last three years, the utility has undertaken and completed six benchmarking studies pertaining to the walk-in customer process, identifying the advantages and disadvantages and costs and benefits for telecommuting, identifying field collections activities, analyzing bad debt / write-off expenses, reviewing meter-reading practices, and identifying call center standards. Includes tables, figures. See more