After Hours Answering Service

The Vendor is required to provide after-hours answering services from their facility.
- Department receives approximately 150 calls each month after normal business hours (7:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) from city water and sewer customers who are reporting emergency situations that must be addressed immediately.
- Department receives an average of 15 calls per week after normal business hours (7:30am to 4:30pm) from customers who are reporting emergency situations that must be addressed immediately.
- Department customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it is necessary to utilize the services of a professional answering service to efficiently document information from customers who contact the city to report emergency situations and accurately relay the information to the on-call city technician or city weekend crew member.
- Provide all equipment, location, and personnel necessary to perform the required services.
- Answer incoming calls in a friendly professional manner identifying to the caller that they have reached the “facilities management” after hours emergency phone”.
- Must provide evidence that a back-up generator and ups system exists to ensure uninterrupted answering services to city customer calls in the event of a power outage.
- Must provide evidence that a back-up call-center and well-defined business continuity process exists to ensure uninterrupted answering services to city customer calls in the event of a need to vacate your primary call center for an extended period of time.
- Must notify the departments within one hour or less if equipment problems affecting service take place. 
- Contact information will be provided after contract award.
- Shall provide an option for the departments to record a standard greeting that the customer hears prior to speaking with the call taker.
- Must provide an option for the departments to create an alternate greeting to inform customers of an outage or system problem so incoming callers know the City is aware of the situation and is working to resolve it.
•    In this situation the Contractor’s answering service will notify the departments when call volume is high and has increased to over 30 calls reporting the same problem.
•    In addition, in this situation the answering service may be instructed to change the alternate greeting to inform callers that the City is aware of the problem.
•    After the problem has been resolved, the answering service will change the greeting back to the normal message.
- On occasion the departments may request answering services for calls during business hours. 
- This situation is rare and shall be priced separately and per minute on the pricing proposal form. 
- Historically this situation doesn’t exceed 20 requests a year and represents 1-2 hours per occurrence.
- The successful contracted answering service times will be established on average call time (in minutes) after 60 days of contract award; however, it is preferred to keep the average call time to 2.5 minutes per incoming call on a monthly basis. 
- Contractor shall have personnel trained in concisely responding to customer’s issues. In the event contractor continually averages calls exceeding 2.5 minutes the contractor shall provide additional training to staff in order to increase call efficiency. 
- If additional training does not improve average talk time to meet the requirement the contractor shall provide to the contract administrators an action report containing details regarding which steps will be taken to rectify the situation. 
- It will be at the contract administrator’s discretion to make exceptions should unexpected circumstances escalate call time. 
- As a reference, current call time average during normal business hours is 1.42 minutes.
- Monthly reports with talk time stats are to be submitted to the department’s contract administrators.
- Answering Service shall not charge the City for minutes spent while on hold.

- Contract Period/Term: 1 year
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: September 05, 2025