by Timothy McQuiston, Vermont Business Magazine. At the height of last Wednesday’s surprise windstorm, Green Mountain Power’s call center was hobbled by a coincidental telecommunications network problem that affected some 4,000 calls into the utility’s headquarters in Colchester. Customers calling in to report a power outage could hear GMP’s customer service representatives, but the reps could not hear the customers.
‘Things were getting a little tense around here,’ said Brian Otley, who is in charge of Technical Operations for GMP. He said the call center was prepared for customer calls as the storm developed during the afternoon, but the first warning came in the form of raised voices in the call center. As calls started to come in around 6 pm to report outages, the reps first started talking loudly to customers. Because every rep was doing this, the noise level escalated.
‘They could hear us, we could not hear them,’ Otley said.
Because of the caller ID, reps started calling those customers back and quickly realized what the problem was. Otley said it only affected in-coming calls. By 7 pm GMP had set up a pre-recorded message telling the caller to leave his phone number and location.
Otley said that because of the volume of calls, the response time escalated as the evening wore on. The issue was compounded because the network problem caused the interactive voice record to fail. Also, GMP could not simply switch over to its outside overflow call center because of interruption in service.
By 10 pm the phones were working normally.
The problem emanated from Level 3, at the telecom network provider’s Burlington facility. Level 3 is primarily a fiber optic telecommunications company. The actual cause of the situation has not been made public yet. GMP’s Dorothy Schnure said Level 3 reported that the network problem was unrelated to the storm. Eventually a report will be sent to the Vermont Public Service Department identifying the cause.
The one-way phone problem affected other Burlington area customers as well, both commercial and residential. But the most profound impact was felt at GMP.
‘We confirmed there were a number of other businesses in the Chittenden County area being affected by this,’ Otley said.
Otley said GMP would get 3,000 customer calls in a typical week. The result of the communications problem was a ‘frustrating customer experience,’ he said.
The normal protocol relies on incoming calls to track outages and, using an algorithm, identify to where repair crews must be dispatched. Despite the phone problem, GMP was able to restore power to all customers by Thursday afternoon. Repair work was not delayed by the communications glitch, Otley said. GMP then assisted Central Vermont Public Service and hard hit Vermont Electric Cooperative in restoring power to their customers.
At the storm’s peak, 4,500 GMP customers and 12,500 VEC customers were without power, or about one-quarter of VEC’s total customer base. CVPS, the state’s largest utility, reported 32,000 customers lost power. CVPS completed its restoration efforts by Friday night and then spent the next two days also assisting VEC.
The storm felled trees, power lines and many utility poles in Chittenden, Franklin and Lamoille counties and knocked out power to some 50,000 Vermont customers.
A wind-blown tree lies across a power line in Williston.