WESTFIELD – The Westfield Gas & Electric Department has initiated a new redundant phone system to increase its ability to communicate with ratepayers and residents during both emergencies and for everyday business.
Sean Fitzgerald, the utility’s energy and community relations specialist, said the city replaced a phone system with only one switch, which if damaged during a storm would, have knocked 0out communication with the department’s operation center.
“We hadn’t upgraded the one-switch system for 13 years,” Fitzgerald said. “We did that upgrade a year ago, so now we have a redundant phone system that gives us a platform to do other things.”
The latest addition to the communications system capabilities is interactive voice recognition (IVR) which allows residents to get into the system’s automatic queue at any time of the day or night, to pay bills or check energy consumption
“We upgraded the phone system about a year ago, so this is the next step. It’s a fully automated system that provides more convenience for our customers,” Fitzgerald said.
The utility studied the content of phone calls coming into the department and determined that the IVR system would increase customer convenience and to be more efficient.
“We did that (IVR installation) because 40 percent of our calls are credit card payment calls,” Fitzgerald said. “Customers can still talk with a service representative, but the IVR is an alternative available 24-7, so if somebody wants to pay their bill at 2 a.m., they can. Customer service representatives are not available after 5 p.m.”
Fitzgerald said that many corporations have had IVR systems for years and that the public sector is catching up with that technology.
“We now have a better capacity to service our customers,” Fitzgerald said. “This will increase our service level, making it easier to get through to a service representative because of (an anticipation that there will be) a lower call volume (as more customers use the IVR system to make payments or check meter readings and energy consumption).
“It will be an much more efficient system,” Fitzgerald said.
