‘Over 7K calls each month; cost to CUC is $15K monthly’

The newly revived Commonwealth Utilities Corp. board has tasked the agency’s management to further study and assess the effectiveness of its existing call center service.

The board requested this after finding out that CUC spends $15,000 a month to pay for this service, which is being handled by a private telecommunication firm for CUC.

“We’re going to look at all aspects of the operation, including the people we have in all our divisions. The board for now specifically tasked our CFO [Charles Warren] to further study the call center service we have. We would like to see if we can do it through in-house instead of paying $15,000 monthly,” board chair David J. Sablan told Saipan Tribune.

During last week’s meeting, CFO Charles Warren and executive director Alan Fletcher took turns responding to board members’ questions about the call center service program, which has been ongoing for more than a year now.

Warren disclosed that CUC’s call center service—performed by IT&E personnel—receive over 7,000 calls from customers each month. About 60 percent of the calls come in during business hours while 40 percent are received at night.

It will be recalled that CUC inked a two-year agreement early last year with IT&E to improve the agency’s call center service at a cost of $180,000 per year. The goal then was to improve customer service and access to CUC departments, through a 24/7 call center service. Since then, all calls made to CUC are answered by a live operator and are either handled directly or connected to appropriate CUC employees.

According to Warren, among the key advantages of the call center is that CUC customers can reach any department by dialing a single, easy to remember number, 664-4CUC. Previously, he said, over two dozen numbers were used to reach various departments.

Warren said the program has been successful since the start. He said the outsourced service has about seven to eight people working 24 hours to accommodate CUC’s customer calls.

The board, however, balked at the $15,000 CUC spends each month for the service and suggested that the cost may be lowered if CUC uses its own personnel.

In presenting his calculation, board chair David Sablan said the 7,000 calls being received every month by about eight personnel represents about 39 calls every hour. He said there are approximately nine calls being handled per operator.

“I think you need to study that and see the cost if we will utilize our in-house staff,” Sablan told Warren.

Warren believes that the $15,000 monthly cost is reasonable for all eight people working 24 hours for CUC.

“This call center replaced the eight staff we have internally and if we will use them, total compensation is higher than $15,000 monthly and you need 24/7 service,” explained Warren.

He added that 40 percent of the calls are for immediate troubleshoots and field services. The rest are from customers who call during daytime to ask about their accounts, payments, and disconnections.

“If the calls are related to customer account, I don’t think they will make calls at night time and ask how much they owe CUC. Customer issues normally come in during working hours,” said Sablan, adding that since operators also connect calls for troubleshooting, the need to have all eight personnel assigned 24/7 at a call center service must be reviewed.