20160722AVU to Staff 56.doc

AVISTA CORPORATION
RESPONSE TO REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

JURISDICTION: IDAHO DATE PREPARED: 07/18/2016
CASE NO: AVU-E-16-03 WITNESS: Heather Rosentrater
REQUESTER: IPUC RESPONDER: Linda Gervais
TYPE: Production Request DEPARTMENT: State & Federal Regulation
REQUEST NO.: Staff - 056 TELEPHONE: [phone]

REQUEST:

Please provide the average number of busy signals reached by parties calling the customer service call center by month from August 2015 to YTD 2016.

RESPONSE:

Avista customers have not received busy signals during the requested time period. Parties should never reach a busy signal when calling Avista due to the systems and services that we have put in place for handling incoming phone calls.

We have 184 phone lines for handling incoming phone calls. In addition we subscribe to a service from AT&T called Advance Features that provides overflow capacity for 70 more callers. If all 184 phone lines are full, the 185th caller triggers the overflow queue from AT&T and callers hear one of two different messages.

If all 184 inbound phone lines are full, the next 70 customers are answered by AT&T with an Avista message asking the caller to continue to hold. Once a line into Avista becomes free, the caller is sent to the Avista phone system and answered normally.

If all 184 inbound phone lines are full and the next 70 customers are holding for an available line, all other calls will be answered by AT&T and are given an Avista message that all phone lines are busy and asked to call again.