Kasupe - Utility Customer Portal and Service Console with Safeguarded Disconnections
Service Console for a Lusaka Water and Electricity Utility
Designed and built a clickable staff service console for a Lusaka water and electricity utility: one queue for faults, leaks and billing queries with live SLA status, a customer 360 for every account, and disconnection batches that check every safeguard before a crew is sent.
Most of our work is under NDA. Per agreement, we can share the work but not the company details - all names and identifying information shown here have been changed.
Impact
Dashboard, service request queue, request detail, customer 360 and disconnection batches. Each of the 26 demo requests and 28 demo accounts opens its own page.
Notice period met, no open dispute, no payment plan, no payment since the final notice, and a welfare decision for anyone on the vulnerable register. Any failed check keeps the account out of the release.
Planned dates must fall Monday to Thursday, jobs cannot be released after 14:00, and the supervisor who approves a batch cannot be the officer who prepared it.
5 depots, 26 service requests, 6 outages, 5 disconnection batches covering 20 accounts, and 9 staff users across 6 roles.
The Problem
Lwimba Hill supplies water and electricity to about 280,000 households and businesses in Lusaka, and its customers had one real channel: the queue at a service centre. Bills were estimated for months, outages spread by word of mouth, mobile money payments sat in suspense with a phone number and no account number, fault reports arrived by phone and WhatsApp with vague locations, and disconnections run from a printed arrears list twice cut supply to a customer on a home oxygen concentrator.
Our Solution
Kasupe gives staff one console for the work behind every customer contact: a service request queue with SLA status and suggested duplicates, a customer 360 that puts bills, payments, tokens, readings and requests on one timeline, and disconnection batches that run every protection check, a welfare review and a second approver before any field job is created.
The Challenge: Service and Collections Without Harm
A municipal utility has to keep water and power flowing, bill fairly under regulator-approved tariffs and collect what is owed, for customers who often have no street address and pay by mobile money, prepaid token or cash.
Disconnections From a Printed List
Disconnection for non-payment needs notice and must follow ERB and NWASCO customer service guidance. Lwimba Hill also forbids cutting supply while a dispute or payment plan covers the debt or before a welfare review of vulnerable customers. A printed list could check none of this.
Faults Nobody Could Count
Faults, leaks and wires down came in by phone, WhatsApp and walk-in, with landmarks instead of addresses. Nobody could say how many were open or how old, or that twenty calls about one burst main were the same fault.
Payments Without an Account Number
Mobile money payments regulated by the Bank of Zambia arrive with whatever the payer typed as a reference. Agents matched them by hand for days while the customer was sent a reminder for a bill already paid.
Sensitive Data on Every Screen
Zambia's Data Protection Act No. 3 of 2021 covers phone numbers, NRC numbers, payment records, usage and photos. Vulnerability flags reveal health information, so staff need the full picture of an account without everyone seeing everything.
Our Approach: From Utility Rules to a Clickable Console
Spec and Rules Research
Mapped 11 user roles, 50 screens (29 staff, 19 customer app and 2 public) and the data model for accounts, supply points, meters, bills, versioned tariffs, payments, token vends, service requests, field jobs, outages, payment plans, disputes and disconnection batches. Wrote down the rules the design follows: the Data Protection Act 2021, ERB and NWASCO tariff approvals and customer service guidelines, STS prepaid tokens under IEC 62055-41 and Bank of Zambia rules for mobile money.
Clickable Demo on a Production UI Kit
Built the staff console's 5 key screens on a production dashboard kit: the dashboard with KPIs, SLA risk and work by role, the service request queue with bulk assign and link to outage, request detail with SLA window, nearby duplicates, field jobs and SMS replies, the customer 360 with 8 tabs and an audited NRC reveal, and disconnection batches with per-account checks, welfare decisions, approval and release. All actions run on local state.
What a Production Build Adds
Integration with MTN MoMo and Airtel Money, a card gateway, bank statement files, the STS vending system, the smart meter data system, the billing system API and an SMS gateway such as Africa's Talking. Staff auth by role, an append-only audit log, a Zambian public holiday calendar, legal confirmation of the notice period, and the remaining screens: the mobile-first customer app in English, Nyanja, Bemba and Tonga, the public outage map, dispatch, meter read validation, payments reconciliation, reports and settings.
Why It Works: Safeguards Before the Crew Leaves
Checked Before and After Release
Each account in a batch shows its notice, dispute, plan, payment and vulnerability checks. Only accounts that pass become field jobs, and a payment after release cancels that account's job and raises a reconnection, as the demo shows for a customer who paid by Airtel Money the day before.
SLA Status on Every Request
Requests show on track, amber in the last 25% of the window, or breached, with time left or over. Open requests within 300 metres are offered as suggested duplicates, and linking several reports to an outage closes them with an SMS to each reporter.
One Account on One Screen
The customer 360 merges bills, payments, prepaid tokens, readings, requests, SMS and contacts into one timeline, with aged debt, consents and staff views in their own tabs. NRC numbers stay masked, and revealing one is written to the audit log.
Policy Kept Apart From Law
The notice period is a compliance setting kept in line with ERB and NWASCO guidance, not a hard-coded legal default. Lwimba Hill's own rules, such as reduced water flow instead of a cut-off for households, are labelled as utility policy on screen.
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Enterprise Software Engineering - Human + AI
Contact Us
Locations
Global Headquarters
21 Merchant Road, 3rd Floor, Singapore 058267
Main corporate office and leadership operations
North America Office
548 Market Street, PMB 12345, San Francisco, CA 94104
Client operations and business development
India Office
402 Shivalik Shilp II, SG Highway, Ahmedabad 380015
Engineering and delivery center
© 2026 - Copyright. All Rights reserved Oceanlab