10EQS

Evaluating Customer Satisfaction, Retention Risk, and Competitive Dynamics in Municipal Utility Billing (CIS) Software

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Situation

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Our client wanted to better understand customer satisfaction, platform stickiness, and competitive dynamics within the municipal utility billing and customer information systems (CIS) software market. They wanted to assess how local governments and water districts manage utility operations, where dated interfaces, ERP integration gaps, and decentralized governance often make vendor evaluation and platform retention difficult.

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Objective

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The objective was to gather an outside-in perspective on platform satisfaction, operational pain points, and switching risk to inform investment and product strategy. The exploration focused on evaluating customer retention drivers, UI/UX concerns, native ERP integration demands, implementation support quality, and the competitive threat posed by modern cloud platforms like SpryPoint.

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Our Work

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10EQS conducted targeted interviews with senior leaders across the municipal utility and public works ecosystem, including IT administrators, public works directors, utility finance managers, and account leads. The research explored platform stickiness drivers and constraints shaping the industry, including benchmarking switching difficulty scores, UI modernization feedback, open API requirements, and hands-on evaluation models.

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Industry experts (excerpt):

10 Industry experts e.g.
- GIS and Asset Admin – East Cherry Creek Valley Water & Sanitation (US)
- CTO – City of Republic, Missouri (US) District Accountant – Papio Missouri River NRD (US)
- Utilities Department Customer Service Manager – City of Plantation (US)

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Results

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10EQS delivered actionable customer intelligence revealing that while overall recommendation scores average 7.3 out of 10, satisfaction splits sharply along customer size and technical sophistication. Findings showed that while smaller utilities value CUSI's flexibility for complex configurations, larger and more technical accounts face operational liabilities due to dated user interfaces and a lack of native ERP integration.

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