Call center upgrade gives NV Energy customers 24-hour service
NV Energy announced Wednesday that it has launched a new statewide call center telephone system that allows customers 24-hour daily access to pay their bills, turn off power at an old address or power up at a new one, get a balance, make a payment or report an outage.
“Our goal is to make it easy for customers to do business with NV Energy,” said Michelle Follette, vice president of Customer Service for NV Energy. “For many customers, using the Internet or IVR for self-service is more convenient and now even more services will be available around the clock.”
The utility's new phone system offers "Interactive Voice Response" solutions that it says will make it easier for customers to reach a live representative. The IVR system communicates in English or Spanish and uses speech recognition technology, or responds to touch tone commands depending on the customer’s preference.
Several new features of the improved system include more easily understood voice commands, an option of making a one-time payment over the phone using a bank account for no charge, and an overall streamlined process to help customers navigate to the right service more quickly.
With a statewide system, Follette said NV Energy can capture the efficiencies of phone service being connected statewide. “When customer call volume is especially high in one area, we can stretch our resources with a statewide link.”
The system also can take outage calls in English or Spanish, a feature not available previously.
“Most customer service calls will continue to be handled by the employees who work in our contact centers in Las Vegas and Reno,” said Follette, noting customers in the north will receive service for outage calls on a 24-hour basis now, the same as it is in Las Vegas.
During the past year, contact center employees handled over 4.3 million customer contacts over the phone, such as bill payments and service turn-ons and turn-offs, said Follette. On a daily basis, about 30 percent of the calls to NV Energy utilize the company’s self-service option.