After Hours Answering Services

The vendor is required to provide that after-hours answering service for customer inquiries and high volume calls for a utility outage or during a major disaster.
- The answering service shall be required to receive calls from 5:00p.m. to 7:30a.m., Monday through Friday, 24-hour service on Saturdays, Sundays and all city holidays.
- The city requires an answering service that is staffed with call handlers that shall be courteous and professional. 
- Staff must be located at the contractor's work facility or contractor's approved work space. 
- An automated call answering service of any type shall not be permitted. 
- Provide multilingual solutions for callers.
- All emergency type calls shall be communicated to the city's on-call personnel in a timely manner with the appropriate information and response. 
- The answering service may be required to enter the relevant information into the city's current work order system so that a work order can be generated and city personnel can be dispatched or begin working the issue.
- Customer service calls shall include both emergency and non-emergency calls.
- Emergency calls
•    Customer service emergency calls are defined as the need for emergency cut-off of utility service (ex: power line down, broken water line) and emergency repairs needed to restore services. 
•    A written protocol will be provided by the city that will indicate to the answering service the appropriate on-duty supervisor, on-call supervisor, on-call crew to be contacted within five (5) minutes of receiving the emergency call. 
•    Contact will be made to city personnel's cell phone, pager, home and office phone number or successful completion of data entry into the city's reporting system. 
•    The answering service shall provide the contact’s name, address, phone number, nature of the emergency and location of emergency or problem to the appropriate city contact. 
•    The list of people on call will be sent to the answering service each month with updates as needed. 
•    Other reference telephone numbers and standard operating procedures will be provided to the answering service.
- Non-emergency calls
•    Non-emergency calls are typically from customer with delinquent account balances who have had utility services disconnected as a result of non-payment. 
•    Customers will be required to pay the bill in full, plus the after-hour’s connection fee; unless they choose to wait until the next business day to re-establish services. 
•    All past due amounts must be paid in full either through the web portal or the automated phone line before services will be reconnected. 
•    The city's billing system automatically updates the customer's account when payment is received. 
•    If customers are unable to pay the bill in full, the customer will need to make contact with utility customer services the next business day. 
•    Customer service will provide an account listing indicating which customers are still disconnected for nonpayment to the answering service daily. 
•    In the event there is a question in regards to a customer's account, the utility customer service supervisor or designee will be contacted to resolve the issue. 
•    Contact information will be provided for all appropriate individuals. 
•    Non-emergency calls also include requests to establish new service, information on office hours and location of customer service center, bill pay locations, general billing questions, and other city business that can be handled during regular business hours.

- Contract Period/Term: 1 year
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: September 04, 2025