Chapter 7: Better Phones; Quality Sound

Long Island Lighting Company

The customer service center at Long Island Lighting Company is one of the largest in the nation, with more than 200 agents serving customer needs, responding to service problems and outages, answering billing questions.

"We used to have four centers around Long Island for handling service problems ," says Chris Bishop, LILCO's training and contingency administrator, "as well as eleven district offices answering billing and similar questions." The difficulty, he noted, was that during storms and the like, individual centers would be badly overloaded - yet other centers couldn't help out.

The answer was the consolidation of the offices in a central location in Melville. It offers a single number for all of LILCO's customers, better resource scheduling and management and, in general, better service for customers. Agents can now help each other respond to any kind of question from any customer.

LILCO uses a NYNEX Digital ACD Prime system which is an integral part of the AT&T 5ESS switch serving the location. The system offers a host of advantages, says Bishop, including the ability to route calls logically to any agent.

"The system sends calls to the most appropriate agent whenever possible," he notes, "but in busy times it will also route calls to any available agent."

Information from the ISDN D channel also offers a powerful management tool. Supervisors now have the real-time status of every agent displayed on their PC screen. "We can see exactly how many calls are coming in at any time," says Bishop, "and react immediately to almost any need. It takes the weak links out of our system."

The system handles a virtually unlimited number of calls, and gathers much better statistics, including the number of calls, call length, how long people waited, and if any callers hung up during busy times. "The numbers help us plan our staffing for maximum response," he adds.

The Call ID information received through the ISDN D channel also lets calls be handled faster, according to Bishop. "We know where the call is coming from, and often who is calling, so the right records can be quickly called up to the agent's computer screen."