City to consider customer service staffing request

FORT SMITH — The city will consider a proposal allowing the Utility Department to maintain the same level of customer service going forward.

The Board of Directors heard a request by Utility Director Lance McAvoy for seven new full-time employees during a study session Tuesday. This includes six customer service representatives and a customer service representative supervisor, who would each be used where they are needed in the department’s customer service program.

The board ultimately decided to place the request on the agenda of its meeting Tuesday. If it is approved, McAvoy said, the department’s customer service program would be restructured and have 19 full-time employees. The seven new employees would cost the city more than $300,000 annually.

In a memo to City Administrator Carl Geffken, McAvoy wrote the department began operating a call center in February 2019 to address additional calls related to a transition to new billing software. Through this, it has helped residents inquire about utility bills, with the center also helping other departments handle customer calls.

It was initially decided the center would use temporary staff to answer incoming customer calls, according to McAvoy. However, it became clear efficiently handling phone calls required temporary staff to have access to the billing system to fulfill various tasks for customers. Since they weren’t city employees, the department couldn’t grant them access for security reasons.

“This means that all other customer service functions needed to be handled by city employees,” McAvoy wrote. “If the call center were staffed with city employees, the employees would be able to answer calls and address all issues without having to transfer the call, resulting in better customer service.”

The Utility Department has customer service representatives at three locations: 623 Garrison Ave., 801 Carnall Ave. and 517 Rogers Ave. The Garrison and Rogers Avenue locations allow customers to pay bills, set up accounts or inquire on their account in person. The call center is housed at the Carnall Avenue location.

McAvoy said the department is struggling to fully staff the Garrison and Rogers Avenue locations with full-time employees, citing “attrition, illness, vacation, and other staffing issues” as making it problematic for it to keep both sites open.

The call center received 84,501 calls last year, of which it was able to handle 73,448, according to McAvoy. Each call lasted two and a half minutes on average, with them being handled by six to eight temporary staff at the call center.

“By utilizing the temporary call center staff, the full-time staff were able to handle the face-to-face interactions, processed mailed-in payments, and also worked to answer customers’ email questions,” McAvoy wrote. “Without additional staff to handle the calls, those calls would have been handled by a total of five customer service representatives who also handle face-to-face interactions with the customers at the Garrison Avenue location.”

McAvoy said the call center has handled 1,421 calls per week to date this year and has had an abandoned, meaning calls not handled, percentage of 24.9%. The volume of calls is expected to increase when the utility department reinstates water meter shut-offs for customers who have not paid their bills by the end of this month. McAvoy expressed the need for additional customer service representatives to set up payment plans, take calls to reconnect service, and handle questions related to the shut-off process.

The department suspended disconnects for non-payment in March 2020 in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic that month.

McAvoy said additional customer service representatives could also handle calls made to other city departments who have “expressed a need and opportunity for call center support,” such as the parks, streets, purchasing and finance departments.

Outside of Utilities, the Sanitation Department is one department making use of the call center already. McAvoy said the center has taken over many calls for the department since Oct. 5, which saw the beginning of increased residential and commercial sanitation rates, a transition from weekly recycle and yard-waste collection to biweekly and other changes.

“I knew that my maximum of three, but usually two, dispatchers at a time were not going to be able to handle the influx of calls from such a drastic change,” Department Director Kyle Foreman said.

Foreman said he was strongly in favor of McAvoy’s request. Among the things Foreman’s staff likes about the call center are it allows customers to be taken care of in a timely manner and the potential for multiple staff members to speak a language other than English.