Manning the phones during an outage

A big thunderstorm rumbled through the Cotton Electric Service area this afternoon. It was one of the wicked ones with high winds, lots of rain, lots of lightning and, of course, lots of power outages.

Not long after it hit the Walters headquarters, an announcement was made that we were all to "log on" and begin taking calls. When there is a large outage, we all pull together to help get things back up and running. For those of us who work "inside," that means helping with the rush of phone calls from members.

It was my first time to answer phones during a weather event. I could remember how to use the new outage software from training in February, but was a little nervous about talking to members. I wasn't sure what to say and didn't really have a script. I got a quick lesson in customer service by listening to Lisa Bowers and Rachel Bowman when they took a few calls. Lisa and Rachel work with me in the Marketing Department at Cotton Electric.

After the first few calls, I realized the members were as familiar with the routine as my colleagues. Members are encouraged to call any time there is any type of problem. There have been many times I've published information about reporting outages.

Many of the first calls were fairly simple notifications that power was out. Most were in the area north and east of Lawton, around Elgin. A substation at Hulen was down for nearly an hour, affecting 1,625 members. The Walters sub, affecting 1,055 was down briefly. We also had broken poles in the Hastings area.

The software lets us know how many calls we have posted in relation to active outages. At one point it said 215 on over 50 outages throughout the service area.

After about 45 minutes, some of the callers were repeats. "Just calling to see if you sent someone out," and "Can you tell me how long the power's going to be out?" The answers were "Yes, someone is working on that," and, "No, but we'll get it back up as quickly as possible."

The software also has a map showing were all the callers are located. The little telephone icons would sprout up from west to east, following the storm.

Talking to the members was interesting. I told one gentleman we would get someone out as soon as possible and he said, "Well, they can't do anything right now. It's raining too hard!"

A woman called and was afraid to go in her house. A tree branch was across a line and pulling wires on the outside of her house.

Another woman reported a line down and crossing the road about a half-mile away. "By the way," she said, "My power is out, too!" Yes, ma'am.

It wasn't too bad, helping out this first time. Good experience for when things might get really bad.

If the power's out, call us. The number is 875-3351 in Walters or 800-522-3520 for the rest of the service area. A dispatcher is on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

-- Karen Kaley