As partners in providing your consumers with the best possible customer service, it’s imperative to work together to enhance their outage reporting experience as much as possible. With new technology, integrations, and services, it’s now easier than ever to ensure a positive customer service interaction.

The following are important steps to consider to make outage reporting as streamlined and uncomplicated as possible for you consumers:

• Make sure your consumer database has up-to-date information, especially phone numbers. Callers with correct phone numbers on file will have more options – and likely more expedient service – when reporting outages during high call volume events.
  • Lacking consumer phone numbers? If so, encourage your consumers to update their contact information via bill stuffers, newsletter articles, social
    media, and mail campaigns. If possible, offer a contest to encourage your consumers to participate.
  • Consider utilizing a business that specializes in locating missing telephone numbers to beef up your database.
• Some methods of transferring phones to CRC are not as reliable as others, resulting in an inefficient call flow for you consumers. Ensure that your phone system and your local telco are not bottlenecking your calls to CRC.
• Make sure your phone system or local telco are passing automatic number identification (ANI) information to CRC. Without this information, CRC’s customer service representatives need to track down the consumer’s information versus it auto-populating on the computer screen, keeping the caller on the line longer than necessary.
• Encourage your consumers to have their account and/or meter numbers handy when they call in to report an outage. The meter number is particularly useful for outages on accounts that have multiple service locations.
• Utilize CRC’s texting services. If you offer this service to your consumers, registered users can simply report their outage by texting “outage” to a designated number. The texting service also enables user to check on the status of their outage and receive a confirmation once the outage is restored – all via text messaging.
• Sign up for CRC’s outage status notification service. Outage status notifications enable CRC to proactively notify your consumers via text message or email that we are aware of their outage, giving them the peace of mind that the utility is working on the problem.

These are just some ideas on how to make sure your organization’s calls are handled as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Contact CRC
For more information about services provided by CRC, please contact our regional business managers below.

• Eastern Region:
  • Mark Colton, Business Manager | 507-437-2131 | markcolton@crc.coop
• Southern Region:
  • Cheryl Haney, Regional Business Manager | 423-718-8242 | cherylhaney@crc.coop 
• Western Region:
  • Scott Dittrich, Regional Business Manager | 507-437-2135 | scottdittrich@crc.coop