‘90 pct. of customer calls were about water issues’

Commonwealth Utilities Corp. board chair Adelina Roberto, board member Ignacio Perez, and treasurer Joe Torres listen to CUC acting executive director Gary Camacho (not seen in the photo) explain the management report during yesterday’s board meeting. Also in the photo reading some documents is vice chair Eric San Nicolas. (Ferdie de la Torre)

Commonwealth Utilities Corp. board chair Adelina Roberto and other board members expressed alarm yesterday over the water supply problems in the CNMI, noting that 90 percent of calls to CUC’s Call Center were about water issues.

“I want the Water Division to be aware of this. We can’t just continue seeing this kind of message,” said Roberto during the board meeting.

According to the call center’s report, of the 1,596 total work orders log for the month of September this year, 1,110 were calls about water issues, 367 were about power, and 129 were about sewer.

On calls for power, water, and sewer, a total of 324 trouble calls were created or acted upon. The call center received a total of 8,455 calls for the same month and answered 7,446.

Roberto pointed out that of the 1,110 calls for water issues, only 178 trouble calls were created, or not even 20 percent of the issues.

“They [customers] are our revenue. They are our employers. They give you your paycheck. So let’s try to start addressing this water repair. This is a lot. We have to be very aggressive,” Roberto said.

Board treasurer Joe Torres agreed with Roberto that the calls for water issues are too many.

“Can the management address this as a team?” Torres asked.

Board member Ignacio Perez complained that he was on Rota, yet he received calls about water interruptions in San Vicente, Saipan.

“I think that’s the reason why Budweiser says people tend to buy more Bud Light than any other drinks because during the water outage, everybody drinks Bud Light,” said Perez, drawing laughter from other board members and CUC staff who attended the meeting.

Roberto said the CUC management should do something and do better about the water problem on Saipan.

“There is a big problem here,” she said.

CUC acting executive director Gary Camacho said they will address the issue and will meet with the Water Division management.

CUC IT analyst/acting call center manager Alain Nunez explained how they receive the calls, why they fail to answer some of the calls, and the duplication of calls due to similar issues.

Nunez disclosed that in one weekend, they received 700 calls in a day.

He said when one village gets hit by power interruption, suddenly all the calls are coming at the same time and there are only two staff to answer the calls.

Nunez said he is talking about an emergency situation such as a transformer exploding and people from a certain village would start calling the call center.

CUC also has a hotline but a voicemail answers the calls.

Nunez said a lot of calls usually happen when there is a water leak. He said a customer would call about the leak, then call again later, and call again to follow up on what’s happening.

Nunez said they transmit the calls to their respective division supervisors through emails or radios.

Torres said he wants the CUC management to come up with a plan to address the customer service part.

“We understand there’s a number of calls that come on water leak, there are so many. Sometimes the accommodations are not there. We have to come up with a solution to our customers because customers are our employers,” Torres said.