Alabama Power’s restoration efforts for Tropical Storm Irma shifted last week from Alabama to Georgia, as employees supported sister company Georgia Power in more ways than boots on the ground. The Customer Service Centers (CSC) were busy helping by taking Georgia Power customer calls.
“We were all hands on deck,” said Leigh Davis, vice president for Customer Services. “We served our customers during the storm at the beginning of the week, and on last Tuesday we began backing up our peer Georgia Power.”
Davis said the CSC answered more than 4,250 customer calls for Georgia Power on Sept. 12-13, and volunteers were scheduled to take calls through Sept. 17, when GPC restored the last of nearly 1 million customers who had faced outages.
Alabama Power and call centers at Gulf Power and Mississippi Power supported the effort.
The Alabama Power CSC storm team was activated Sept. 11.
“We have had more than 130 employees working through the storm,” said Cassandra Coleman, manager for the North CSC.
In addition to CSC employees, 38 volunteers from Birmingham and Southern division offices, a record number, volunteered to field calls.
“These are on top of the 44 CSC employees who have volunteered to work overtime,” said Tim Bowen, manager for the South CSC. “Volunteers worked before and after their normal shifts or on their off days, and they were glad to do it for others because we appreciate the backup when a storm affects us.”
