News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Four days in and Upper Cumberland Electric’s new Interactive Response System is graded a total success.
The system allows all UCEMC customers to use one phone number to contact the utility department. IT Manager Wade Givens said this new system has been a total success.
“Before we had everything broken out by office and they had to contact each individual office,” Givens said. “This [new system] allows them to take care of their business themselves before they have to speak with somebody over the phone which obviously ruins efficiency. This allows them to have quicker and better service.”
Givens said the main reason UCEMC implemented IVR was the old system could not handle large volumes of incoming calls during wide spread power outages, like the March tornado. Additional services customers can report on are power outages, potential hazards near a power line, or needing extra services.
“By moving this to a solution that allows us to have a much much higher volume, we can serve a lot more members and they can all get through simultaneously,” Givens said. “The amount of members that we could serve at the same time is exponentially larger than it was before we made the move to the IVR.”
Since January Givens has worked on putting the one stop shop calling system together. He said members can get the best experience from the IVR system by adding their phone number and credit card information to their account. Having both on file will allow the customer to finish their business faster than ever.
“Once you set up and you pay your bill through the IVR and you set up the steps [phone number and credit card information], you can pay your bill anytime you want as quickly as you want 24/7,” Givens said.
Givens said an Outage Management System will be installed in the future. This system gives feedback to customers who are experiencing a power outage. He said the system will take their location information and confirm whether or not UCEMC is working on fixing the problem.
The new number to call is 1-800-261-2940.
