Customer Contact Representative II Gretchen Maloney answers calls in the Call Center. She enjoys being able to make a struggling customers day better.
Gretchen Maloney, Customer Contact Representative II, has spent the majority of her adult life in customer service and has an ingrained understanding of what people need when they are going through difficult times. That knowledge is valuable considering many of the calls that come in are customers who are struggling to pay for their utility services.
She said that many customers call upset about a higher-than-normal bill or utility cutoff, but she finds that the utility payments are the straw that broke the camel’s back in their lives. She said some customers are dealing with so much, and the situations are typically resolved when they are heard and understood.
“It’s not always just about the utility bill,” she said. “Sometimes they have a lot going on in their lives, and you have to listen to them to understand what’s happening and how to help. The best part about my job is when I can make a difference and make a customer’s day or even their hour better when they are going through a hard time.”
On Gretchen’s desk sits a little plaque that reads, “Prayer is the key that unlocks all doors.”
It was a gift from a woman who Gretchen met while working. The customer had lost her fiancé and was behind on her utility bill.
She was overwhelmed with grief and all the practical things that fall by the wayside when losing someone close.
“While she was on the phone with me, I told her to take a deep breath and let it out,” Gretchen said. “I helped her work out a game plan to get her through the next month, and she worked that plan and was OK. She gave me that plaque for helping her through it.”
Over the years, Gretchen has been able to make a positive impact in customers’ lives. It is more than a phone call, but an opportunity to help a customer and make their life a little better in whatever way she can. One customer even reaches out to her regularly because of that connection she was able to build and foster.
“When I met this customer, he had just lost his wife and he was diagnosed with cancer,” she said. “He was struggling to pay his bill, and he called me, and I gave him resources. I still direct him to resources when he needs them. But sometimes there isn’t anything more we can do to help him, and he just calls to talk to me. He doesn’t really have anyone. I keep up with him and check his account here and there to see if it is current. Once he was behind, and I hadn’t heard from him. When we finally got up with him, come to find out, he had been hospitalized which was why he couldn’t pay his bill.”
As an entire department, Customer Relations is dedicated to customer care by giving back to the community. From blanket donations to fan donations to collecting hurricane relief items, Customer Relations supports customers facing challenges by alleviating individual burdens through donations and fundraising.
Tonya Roebuck, Customer Relations Team Lead, working at the GUC Express office on Greenville Boulevard, has 30 years’ worth of stories about how GUC has grown and how customer service has changed.
Though Tonya knows the job can be difficult at times, especially when a customer comes in who has exhausted available resources and is still struggling.
“When an elderly person on a fixed income comes in, and they can’t pay, that’s hard. We help as much as we can, but sometimes we don’t have anything else to give,” she said.
She is also the first to say that it’s the angry customers who can be the most challenging part of the job, but she is able to say it with a lighthearted chuckle.
“I’ve been called anything you can think of,” she said with a laugh. “Customers are more likely to yell at you over the phone, but you can get them in the office too, and the challenge is always to de-escalate. I get cussed out daily sometimes, but definitely weekly. You have to remember they aren’t mad at you personally, but the situation they are in.”
Tonya trains Customer Contact Representatives to understand how to deescalate situations, and when she finds that a representative is struggling in a particular situation, she intercedes.
She remembers one customer in particular who was upset at the Express office, and the representative was having a difficult time helping solve the problem for the customer. Tonya stepped in.
“You have to empathize with customers and let them know you hear them. That’s what I did,” Tonya said. The customer, in the end, hugged Tonya and the representative, apologized, and thanked them for their help.
Tonya said customers who come in typically have a two-minute wait, and staff rotate their tasks between helping walk-ins, taking calls, answering chats, and responding to customer inquiries via email. This rotation is all by design.
“We don’t want the same person doing the same thing all the time. They will get burned out,” she said.
All Customer Service Representatives are on a nine-month rotation, serving at the Call Center, the Main Office, and Express.
Mandy Coldren, Customer Relations Team Lead, said that people have the tendency to be ruder over the phone rather than in person.
“Some can be so quick to cuss you out over the phone,” she said. “Even if they do show up in the office, they call first and feel freer to say whatever they want. If someone gets a really bad call, you can walk away from the phone after the call and take a breather or take time to vent with other folks.”
One thing is for certain; the Call Center has nothing but supportive colleagues who help each other get through the toughest of phone calls.
Having that supportive network is important considering the call volume, where on an average day they receive between 600 to 800 calls, and on a cutoff day up to 1,000. A Customer Representative will take between 60 to 80 calls in a normal day, and on a busy day, it could be up to 100.
The response rate of our representatives out pace industry averages by leaps and bounds. For an average public utility, the abandoned call rate is between 5-8%. GUC’s rate is between 1-2%. Average public utilities’ call answer time is 20 seconds, and GUC exceeds industry standards with a 10-second answer time.
High bills are one of the top complaints that representatives hear about. Scott Mullis, Director of Customer Relations, said that getting customers to understand how energy usage correlates with the weather has always been difficult to convey. This is because by the time they get the bill for a month that was extremely cold or hot, the temperatures have leveled out.
To help with high usage issues among customers, GUC boasts of Energy Services, a division of Customer Relations.
“Every utility company has billing and customer service,” explained Colleen Sicley, Assistant Director of Customer Relations, “but not every utility offers Energy Services like we do.”
Jonathan Sergeant and Seth Shoneman with Energy Services make home visits to help customers find out why their usage is so high and how they can solve that problem in the long term. Each month, they will do between 20-25 energy audits, with January coming in at around 120. We will go behind the scenes with Energy Services in the July/August edition of Spotlight, when temperatures reach their peak.
Customer Service Representatives are the lynchpin in helping customers address their problems.
“The person on the phone or coming into one of our offices needs help and a problem solved. I love doing both of those things. We are problem solvers and helpers,” Colleen said.
Customer Relations sends out 17,000 final notices each month and 20% of those go unpaid.
“Interactions with non-pay customers are often the most challenging. Handling high-stress conversations all day can wear on you mentally, even when you’re doing your best to stay positive,” Colleen said. “We’ve built a strong and supportive team by getting through the challenges together. And even when the days are tough, we still genuinely love the work and the people we do it with.”
Carolyn Jones, Staff Support Specialist I, is the first face a customer sees when they go into the Main Office downtown where college students visit and residential customers in West and North Greenville go. Each month, the downtown office will see around 500 customers.
She is a familiar face to many of them. She said most of the people who come in know her from living in the area, which has proven to be a comfort for many who come in and may be struggling.
“A lot of our customers are great, and they make up for the tough ones,” she said.
The Main Office and Express Office stay busy. There are three Customer Service Representatives and a Team Lead at the offices where they see customers in person, answer online chats, and also take calls for the Call Center.
Laying Down the Law
From identifying meter tampering, to fraud to gaming the system, Customer Service Representatives and Analysts know when to start playing hardball.
Cindy Burke, Customer Contact Representative II, seems to always get the customers who are the wiliest when it comes to fraudulent behavior. She said from identifying falsified leases that include a notary seal, to customers strategically bouncing from the Main Office to the Express Office to get out of payment, a representative has to be on their toes.
“I mark my calendar for some customers to keep up with whether they said they would do what they said they were going to do about paying their bills,” she said. “There was one customer we offered a payment plan to, and he was caught tampering with a meter. He still came in behind on his bill. I told him that he has to pay this amount by this date, or he will be on the cutoff list. I marked it on my calendar to make sure I check his account and ensure cutoff happens if he doesn’t do what he said he’s going to do.”
Support Analysts within Customer Relations provide oversight services for GUC. They perform quality control of customer billing. Approximately 11,170 accounts are reviewed each month for billing exceptions within CCS.
Support Analyst I Mandy Joyner said in a given day she can receive up to 500 billing error issues, depending on the billing cycle. Though that may seem daunting, she enjoys it.
“I enjoy finding the reason something was incorrect. I also have the opportunity to learn more about our services and our system,” she said.
Support analysts also manage the collection and service severance process and are responsible for delinquent account payment arrangements, bad debt management, and investigation of illegal utility usage.
Support Analyst III Tammy Forrest’s main task is investigating meter tampering and theft of services.
“I am a jack of all trades, master of none,” she said. “I have to know about all the departments, their meters, and code law. It’s never the same day for me. This is detective work in some respects. Every case is different, and every situation is different.”
Tammy works closely with Meter to identify potential tampering. Once tampering has been identified, the suspect is required to pay the fees assessed from the tampering incident.
In 2023, there were 61 meter-tampering incidents; in 2024, there were 86 meter-tampering incidents; and this year, up until April, there have been 37 meter-tampering incidents.
Tammy has seen a lot in her investigation work, but there was one memorable customer who in the dead of night, on a Sunday, moved his trailer using a tractor to a vacant lot without permission of the lot owner. When he placed his trailer, he was able to connect electrical services. He ended up calling GUC because the services that he was stealing was not providing him with enough power to keep his court-ordered ankle monitor charged.
“While he was hollering at one of our linemen, a Pitt County Sheriff’s deputy pulled up because his ankle monitor had died,” Tammy said. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”
Tammy gets satisfaction out of being able to identify theft.
“I understand that sometimes you go through a hard time, but most of these cases are people who just want to get one over on us. It’s not done out of necessity, but just because they can and don’t want to pay for services,” she said.
