PANJIM: Amidst complaints that the Electricity Department’s 1912 call centre does not respond to consumers’ calls, it has come to light that the call centre had only 10 telecallers for nearly six lakh domestic consumers across the State.
Recently, Power Minister Ramkrishna ‘Sudin’ Dhavalikar had stated that the Department will install CCTVs to monitor the working of the call centre, situated along the Kadamba Plateau on Panjim-Ponda highway.
Highly placed sources in the department on condition of anonymity informed O Heraldo that for the last seven years, since the call centre had been established, the technical as well as the human resource requirements had not been upgraded. There are 10 telecallers to attend to consumer complaints in every shift and the centre works round-the-clock in three shifts.
“There are 10 persons working, of which eight attend calls and two are allocated the task to follow-up the complaint and escalate the issues to higher ups in the department. Sometimes when there are too many calls and pending cases, then there are only seven to attend the calls and three are assigned for escalation of the complaint,” sources said.
However, during monsoon, the strength is increased from 10 to 15 and in every shift, 15 tele-callers work at the centre.
Stating that the increase in staff is keeping in mind the number of calls increase during summer and monsoon, the sources said, “Between November and February, 10 telecallers are sufficient as the number of complaints is less. But the centre gets overloaded during summer and monsoon. It’s during the months between March and October that most of the calls are received and when they are either not received or don’t get connected, consumers complain that the call centre does not function.”
The call centre has one Primary Rate Interface (PRI) line with the capacity of 30 calls, hence while seven or eight calls are being received, there will be 22-23 calls waiting to connect.
“The person after the 30th call will not even get connected to the call centre until one of the calls is disconnected,” the sources informed.
When questioned on the delay to get connected to a telecaller, it was informed that whenever a call is received, the telecaller first has to seek the details of the caller to ascertain the area and only then the complaint is registered.
“Every call lasts for about 4-5 minutes, of which the first three minutes go into seeking the address details of the caller. The centre needs software, which will automatically reflect the caller’s address that is registered to the consumer number of the caller. This will save a lot of time and the telecallers can attend more calls,” an official suggested.
He further said that even if the phone number is not registered with the consumer number, then the telecaller has to take the address details only once and during every subsequent call from that number, the address will reflect automatically unless the complaint is at a different location, but it can be mentioned.
Regarding the process, it was informed that after the complaint is received a message is sent to the area Junior Engineer, Assistant Engineer and the Executive Engineer. If the complaint is not acknowledged or addressed at the lowest level, then the call centre escalates the matter to the higher officer.
Responding to a question about being able to reach the officials during the night, a source said, “Though the officers are expected to be available round-the-clock, practically it’s not possible. So, during the night hours we usually depend on the linemen.”
