The vendor is required to provide professional telephone answering services for the support of the city’s operations, activities and programs, during night, holiday, weekend hours, or on an as needed basis; categorized as “after hours” as described in on an as-needed basis.
- The answering services will be used on an after-hours schedule and occasionally during regular business hours on a “fill-in basis” when staffing levels or business needs require added assistance.
- The city of normal business hours is 7:00 am till 6:00 pm Monday –Thursday. (Closed on Fridays and weekends) coverage is required week days from 6:00 pm – 7:00 am on (Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays); weekends from 6:00 pm Thursday to 7:00 am Monday; and major holidays.
- Providing after hours telephone answering services for public works department and traffic engineering department.
- The city is requiring a contractor to accept telephone calls by live operators stationed at 24-hour centers that can forward phone messages, faxes, and emails to designated staff and have the ability to judge the severity of important calls that require immediate response based on criteria supplied by the city.
1. Public works department:
• Nature of calls received includes but is not limited to the following categories:
• Water information and leak report
• Sewer information and back up report
• Street information and repair
• Sanitation (residential bulk, trash, recycling) information and service request
a. Hours of answering service required
• Weekdays: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday - 6:00 pm to 7:00 am
• Weekend: 6:00 pm Thursday – 7:00 am Monday
• Major holidays
• On occasion during normal business hours as needed Monday – Thursday, 7:00 am – 6:00 pm.
b. Call handling: 
• Call handling instructions by division, day of week and type of call will be provided to successful bidder.  
• Some calls such as water leaks and sewer overflows will require immediate dispatch to designated division phone and email. 
• Calls of a more routine nature will be sent to a public works group email for handling the next business day. 
• On Fridays, the streets division, during operational hours will require dispatch to designated phone/email. 
• A listing of all calls handled during normal business hours will be sent via email immediately after the phones are turned back or released to the department. 
• This email must include the specific, detailed call information so the caller can be contacted.
2. Traffic engineering department:
• Nature of calls received includes, but is not limited to the following categories:
• Street lights (outage or malfunction—hot line)
• Emergency (streetlight pole knocked down—police contact)
• Missing or downed traffic and street sign traffic signal dark or flashing, stop signs down/missing (police contact)
• Damaged and missing signs 24/7 (hot line)
a. Hours of service needed:
• Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 6:00 pm to 7:00 am
• Thursday 6:00 pm through Monday 7:00 am
• Major holidays
• On occasion during normal business hours as needed Monday - Thursday
- Customer service requirement
• Answer 80% of calls within 120 seconds of call offered.
• Answer 95% of calls within 180 seconds of call offered.
• Must notify the city of public works department within an hour or less if equipment problems affecting service take place. 
• Contact information will be provided after contract award.
• Answer incoming calls in a friendly professional manner identifying to the caller that they have reached the "city of public works emergency phone”.
• Must provide evidence that a back-up system exists to ensure uninterrupted answering services to v customer calls in the event of a power outage.
• Must have a minimum of one Spanish speaking call taker on duty for each shift.
• The successful contracted answering service will be required to keep the average call duration time to 3.5 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 avenges calls exceeding 4.5 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 administrator 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. 
• On occasion the city of may request answering services for calls during business hours. 
• During business hours request, reports shall be emailed to the designated email address on the same day once phones have been unforwarded. 
• 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.
• Answering service shall not charge the city for minutes spent while on hold. 
• Offeror shall provide a flexible tiered pricing plan that will allow city to pay only for minutes used as indicated on the pricing proposal form with the ability to fluctuate from tier to tier on a monthly basis as needed.
• Geographic familiarity with the city of water and sewer service area is preferred.
• Must provide an option for the department 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.
• Monthly report with talk time stats for all calls by day, time and call type
• Monthly report shall identify calls that exceed the average call duration of 3.5 minutes.
o The contractor’s answering service will notify the water/wastewater on-call operator when call volume is high and has increased to over 30 calls reporting the same problem.
o The answering service may be instructed to change the alternate greeting to inform callers that the city is aware of the problem.
o After the problem has been resolved, the answering service will change the greeting back to the normal message.
o Call takers will ask each caller if the situation they are reporting is an emergency that must be addressed before the normal business hours of 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday.
o Non-emergency calls: if the situation can be handled during normal business hours the call taker will take the caller's name, address, phone number and a description of the problem, question or concern and assure the caller that the situation will be addressed the next business day.  
o The call taker will email the information to the designated departmental email address city department. 
o The event that electronic mail complications occur the information may be faxed to the city number provided.
• Emergency calls:
o Public works: if the situation cannot wait until normal business hours the call taker will take the caller’s name, phone number and description of the water or sewer emergency and will assure the caller that they will receive a call back from the on-call operator who is on call or the weekend crew.  
o If it is determined that the call taker must relay the information to the on-call operator, the call taker will follow specific instructions provided by public works.
- Required service days and times
• Monday — Wednesday from 6:00 p.m. to 7.00 a.m. the following day.
• Thursday 6:00 p.m. through Monday 7.00 a.m. (coverage is required 24 hours for Friday, Saturday and Sunday).
• On occasion the city of 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. 
• The past, this situation doesn’t exceed 20 requests a year and represents 1-2 hours per occurrence.
- Answering service must forward a report showing all call activity at the end of each shift or after the phones are released back to the department during normal working hours, via email to the contact administrator (or designee) that includes the following information.
• Contact information including name, phone number, and issue.
• Time call was received.
• Time dispatched to city on-call technician or weekend crew.
• Calls that can be handled during normal business hours will also be included on this report.
- Reporting requirements
• Total number of calls identifying English and Spanish
• Total number of calls abandoned
• Average length of calls
• Total number of calls requiring immediate response by public works
• Percentage of answered calls within 120 seconds of call offering
• Percentage of answered calls within 180 seconds of call offering
• Number of calls per division and category: sanitation, water, sewer, streets, other.
- Contract Period/Term: 3 years
- Pre-Submittal Conference (Non-Mandatory) Date: June 16, 2025
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: June 18, 2025