This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Who Answers My Phone Call After Hours?


After a rough night of storms, I was talking to a fellow member and was asked this question. “Where does my phone call go when I report an outage after hours?” Great Question! I’ll do my best to answer.


Cimarron Electric Co-op has partnered with Cooperative Response Center (CRC) in Austin, MN. CRC is a nationwide contact center, handling after hour calls for over 200 electric co- operatives. CRC is a cooperative (owned and operated) and has trained employees in their call centers in Austin, MN, Dunlap, TN and Abilene, TX.


When you call Cimarron Electric after regular business hours, your call is immediately routed to the call center. A Cus- tomer Service Rep (CSR) or an electronic prompt answers your call. How it is answered depends on the volume of calls coming in for the outage and the areas involved.


CRC needs to know where your account is and you will be prompted or asked for your 10-digit phone number where the account is located. If the phone number entered matches what is on your file, your account information will pop up on CRC’s screen. If the phone that you call from, or the phone number you give CRC doesn’t match the phone number Cimar- ron has on your account, CRC must have additional information to locate you. Your meter number, account number or location number are the three primary ways to identify you and which account is without power. It is important to have updated in- formation (phone numbers) on your Cimarron Electric account. Up to three phone numbers can be entered into your file.


After the phone number entry has identified you and your location, you can press 1 to report an outage or press 2 for all other calls. Option 1 also has a shortcut called Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR). You can report an outage without speaking to an agent! If you don’t want to use IVR, and prefer to talk to an agent, you are placed on hold or into a queue to hold for the next agent. If on hold, you will get the option ev- ery 30 seconds to report outage with the IVR system by pressing option 1 again. This could be a big time saver during heavy call times.


Once the information about your outage is received, the CRC representative will save the information and it will go to the CRC dispatcher. The dispatcher will follow instructions provided by Cimar- ron Electric Cooperative in calling out the crews. During major storms our dispatch- ing to linemen is always brought back to Cimarron’s headquarters for our linemen’s safety and efficiency.


I hope this sheds some light on how after hour calls are handled. You can also go to www.cimarronelectric.com and click on the Cimarron Outage Map. It helps to provide information on how many people are in the outage and locations. You can also get information and updates during storms on Cimarron Electric Cooperative’s Face- book Account. It is updated as information becomes available from our linemen.


If you have several different ac- counts with us and they are not all in the same area, please provide which account is off when you call. All the accounts will pull up when your telephone number is identi- fied with multiple accounts. Thank You.


Cimarron Electric’s Office will be closed Monday, September 2nd for Labor Day.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160