Alliant Energy will discontinue walk-in customer service at 16 Alliant commercial offices, including Washington.

Walk-in service, offered at 26 Alliant sites in Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois, will be replaced at the 16 affected sites by services offered through Alliant Energy’s tall free call centers.

Commercial offices in Iowa that will start the transition away from walk-in service are in Ames, Burlington, Centerville, Clear Lake, Creston, Decorah, Fort Madison, Marshalltown,, Mason City, Muscatine, Oelwein, Ottumwa, Spirit Lake and Washington. Minnesota offices affected are in Stewartville and Winnebago.

Only walk-in customer service will be affected by the changes. Operations and maintenance facilities will not.

“Walk-in customer service has typically been available only during business hours. Transitioning to more consistent, specialized 24-hour service through the call centers will allow us to invest more heavily in the services used most frequently by the majority of our customers,” said Alliant Customer Information and Service Director Theresa Mulford. “This will not only improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our customer service operations, but will also continue our efforts to develop innovative solutions that meet customers’’ needs with the quality they expect.”

Alliant Energy’s 24-hour call centers and telephone customers’ service representatives were recently recognized as one of the top 15 utility customer service entities in the nation. In addition to 24-hour call center availability, Alliant continues to offer the Easy Pay automatic bank account deduction and Pay-by-Phone utility payment options to its customers. It is also working to develop an on-line bill payment option through the Alliant Energy web site.