Major power outages still trouble New England

ContactRelief Recommendations for Contact Centers

ContactRelief is making public recommendations made to its subscribers, Monday, October 30th, 2017.

ContactRelief recommends suspending contact with consumers in certain counties and zip codes in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont due to power outages caused by high winds. These counties and zip codes contain the most concentrated areas of power outage. Our policy is to identify counties or zip codes with at least 20% of total population affected by the power outage.

Major coastal storm hits New England

Yesterday's powerful coastal storm that struck New England did significant damage to the electrical infrastructure over a wide area from Connecticut to Maine. Sustained winds as high as 60 MPH with gusts as high as 80 MPH were reported. The winds calmed by Monday afternoon over much of the area but the damage was done.

Large populations still have no power although significant progress in restoring power is expected today as the high winds are no longer hampering repair efforts. However, utility experts warn that full restoration could take days.

Over 739,000 customers are currently without power. The state by state breakdown of power outages is shown below:

• Connecticut - 59,000+
• Massachusetts - 110,000+
• Maine - 344,000+
• New Hampshire - 106,000+
• Rhode Island - 83,000+
• Vermont - 37,000+

Assuming the national average of 2.67 people per household, this means that over 1.9 million people are affected. We have identified the hardest hit areas and recommend suspending contact in these areas through Tuesday night. Redirecting your contact attempts to other areas should improve your overall contact efficiency. To obtain the list of zip codes to suspend, become a ContactRelief subscriber as shown below. We will provide updated recommendations later today if warranted and a full update later tonight.

Why You Must Also Prepare for Man-Made Disasters - The Las Vegas Mass Shooting

Contact centers need to be prepared to act quickly and decisively not only for forecasted events like hurricanes, but also for man-made disasters that cannot be predicted. On Sunday night in Las Vegas, over 50 people were killed and over 500 injured in a senseless mass shooting at a local music festival.

ContactRelief issued a recommendation to suspend contact to accounts with zip codes surrounding the Las Vegas Strip on October 2nd at 12:30 AM PDT, a little more than 2 hours after the incident began, and expanded this contact suspension recommendation at 4:30 AM PDT to include all of the county surrounding Las Vegas (Clark County, Nevada) as more details became known.

If you are like most companies, you can't afford the staff to perform the around the clock monitoring required to act promptly, the management of multiple concurrent disasters, and information gathering it takes to know when and where to suspend and resume contact for all types of possible events. But why bother when ContactRelief has this and more for less than $300 per month.

Why You Must Act Now

Our offer of free access to our service will expire soon. We provide the only service specially designed for contact centers and focused on all aspects of the customer experience during natural and man-made disasters. We can not only tell you when and where to suspend contact, but when and why you should resume contact, and how you can improve your brand image by the actions you take during these periods. Because before starting ContactRelief we owned and operated large contact centers, we understand your business perspective, and our recommendations are designed to help you deliver a great customer experience while still enabling you to achieve your other objectives.

Don't Delay

The next disaster is on its way. Become a ContactRelief subscriber and keep your company protected from disaster. Our full recommendations consist of the areas to be suspended and the list of zip codes covering these areas. For as little as $300 per month your company can quickly implement a solution that protects your company and its customers. As we say at ContactRelief, "It's just smart business."

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Contact sales@contactrelief.com for more information.