BASSETERRE, St.Kitts (Friday 24th July 2020)- Senior citizens could soon benefit from an even quicker turnaround time in paying bills at the St.Kitts Electricity Company (SKELEC) Ltd. office as more people not in that age category make good on the company’s tech savvy and moderns means of doing business.

Such is the view of SKELEC Public Relations Officer Gawain Fraites who shared such an insight following a question posed by this reporter on the topic at a customer service launch activity of its Interactive Voice Response (IVR) at its office on Central Street on Friday 10th July 2020 following its official media launch the day before.

“For the senior citizens, it actually works out well. During COVID-19 what we realized is that our increase in sign-ups for paying their bills online was massive. The number of persons paying their bills online boosted by a high percentage and so it helps and then now the senior citizens they don’t have to come in and wait in a long line even though the senior citizens had their own lines but they don’t have to wait in the longer lines because a lot of the senior citizens they are not going to switch; they’re going to trek into SKELEC wait to pay their bills but now that we have more persons are paying online and they’ll be switching and paying their bills over the phone, a lot of the senior citizens can easily get into and out of SKELEC office a lot easier.”

“We are giving out a little token to members of the public who come in and pay their bills. We haven’t done anything in a while because you know because of COVID we didn’t have a Customer Appreciation Month which is usually in May. So we decided that let’s just try to have something small whereby when persons come in we give them a little token of appreciation to say thank you. We tell them how the system works and how easy it is. So instead of most of them coming here to our office to pay their bills or make enquiries, they could do all that over the phone. They could simply call 465-2000 and do their enquiries, pay their bill or update their accounts over the phone so all that is what we’re telling persons. We’re also giving out some flyers as well because the flyers actually show the persons how to use this system in the breakdown …,” he told reporters.

That day, customers were given a complimentary glass of apple cider and IVR tokens including pop sockets and pens.