When thinking about OPD5, one might first think of line crews, bucket trucks, power lines, poles and substations. But when it’s time to actually interact with the district, the real touchpoint for the public is the OPD5 customer service department.
This six-person team (four in the Mesquite office and two in Overton) stand on the front lines of the district, always ready to serve the needs of thousands of OPD5 customers.
These are the smiling faces that greet customers each day. In fact, this team helped a total of 2,143 people who walked into the two OPD5 offices during office hours in the month of August. And that doesn’t even count the volume of customer service calls that were routed directly to the team. In August, these representatives fielded 1,308 calls; handled with competence and efficiency. It took the team an average of only 2.5 minutes per call to provide the service needed, and hold times were also short with an average of about 7 seconds.
OPD5 Customer Service Supervisor Kristi Eames said that, with all those customer interactions, her team must be ready for anything. “Our customer service staff is the first line for just about everything,” she said. “When something happens out there in the system, we are usually the first to deal with it because we get the phone calls.”
During an outage, call volumes at OPD5 can skyrocket quickly with eager customers wanting to know what happened. Members of the customer service team are the ones who answer those calls.
“That can be a nightmare,” Eames said. “We try to keep up, but sometimes our phone system just can’t take that kind of volume. Then people can become impatient and upset not being able to get through.”
To avoid this, OPD5 has instituted more efficient means of spreading the word to as many people as possible, all at once. Social media channels are a big part of that strategy. As soon as OPD5 crews become aware of an outage, Eames gets busy posting whatever news is available about it on social media.
Often that might be just a short confirmation that an outage is taking place. “Everyone wants to know exactly what happened right away,” she said. “But sometimes in the first few minutes, we still don’t even know yet. But our initial goal is to get something posted online quickly so that we can slow down at least some of those phone calls.”
Regular updates are then posted during the outage as more information becomes available, Eames said.
But what about those customers who don’t use social media? Information posted on OPD5 social media is available to anyone with a smartphone that can get a signal. “You don’t have to have an account on social media,” she said. “Anyone can go to our website. We have links there to our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages. Those links will take you right to our social media pages to see the updates; no account needed.”
If all else fails, customers can provide a cell phone number to OPD5 customer service to receive important updates by text message.
Though the OPD5 staff always seem cheerful, there are times when their job is anything but cheery. Most of the time customers are satisfied. But occasionally there are circumstances where it is nearly impossible to make a customer happy.
“For example, disconnect days are no one’s favorite day,” Eames said, referring to the hard deadline when power service for a relatively few customers must be disconnected due to extended lack of payment.
But even in those cases, the team follows a detailed procedure meant to prevent disconnects from happening. Numerous advance notifications go out. These include phone calls and emails to customers who have already received a disconnect notice in the mail. “If they return our phone calls or emails, we will work with them on an arrangement to keep their power on,” Eames said. “If they don’t, we can’t.”
Those arrangements might include setting up a payment plan to get the customer back on track. Sometimes, OPD5 customer service will inform struggling customers of energy assistance programs for which they might be eligible.
“We understand that there is a lot of need out there, so we help folks as much as we can,” Eames said. “We try to go above and beyond in that respect.”
But sometimes none of that produces the required result and the customer faces having their power service disconnected.
“Those are really hard days for the customer service staff,” she said. “They might get yelled at and be called names by a frustrated customer. But a lot of times, for our staff, it is no longer something that is even in their control anymore.”
“Customer service is a special skill,” Eames concluded. “It is really not something that everyone can do. It takes a certain kind of person to be able to get screamed at and still keep a smile on their face. We have a great team here who genuinely wants to do all they can to help our customers. OPD5 has always prided itself on that.”