We need telephone numbers!
With more and more people dumping their landlines and switching to cellphones, the cooperative's database has taken a hit over the past several years.
Last month, we presented the customer satisfaction survey results. The results were based on 225 phone interviews plus 120 members who completed the survey online after receiving an e-mail from our research group.
In order to reach 225 members, researchers had to contact 462 members. Naturally, some declined to take the phone survey.
What was striking was that we no longer had accurate phone numbers for 110 members.
That means we no longer have accurate phone numbers for 24 percent of the people we tried to contact.
It that's representative of North Central's membership as a whole, that means we no longer have accurate phone numbers for approximately 2,300 members. That's huge.
Why is that important?
In times of high call volume, such as during a major electrical outage, the cooperative uses your phone number to automatically route your call. If you're reporting an outage at night or on the weekends, your call is routed to the Cooperative Response Center (CRC), which dispatches our line crews.
During high-volume events, you might not even talk to an operator. While you have the option of waiting to talk to a call-center representative, CRC can automatically record your phone number and include your location as part of the outage.
It's one of the main reasons we have a call center. During large outages, we can't handle the high volume of calls that CRC can process using enhanced technology.
The cooperative never sells its membership list to telemarketers or other third-party businesses. For surveys conducted on our behalf, the firm conducting the survey must sign a confidentiality agreement ensuring our membership list will not be shared. Membership information is always kept strictly confidential.
When it comes time to elect board members to the cooperative's board of trustees, our policy states we won't even give the candidates a list of members in their district. If they would want to mail information to members of their district, the cooperative would do the mailing on their behalf and have the candidate or trustee reimburse the cooperative the cost of postage.
Having accurate phone numbers and e-mail addresses in our database also helps if we have to notify you of a scheduled or emergency-repair outage.
We also give courtesy calls to members if they may be disconnected and to notify members when we're in the area trimming trees or testing poles.
Giving North Central an accurate telephone number is purely voluntary.
But providing a high level of customer service is part of our core mission.