Rock Falls City Council OKs contract with call center to answer utility phone calls after hours

ROCK FALLS – The phone number for Rock Falls residents to call when they have nonemergency utility issues after business hours will stay the same, but who picks up is set to change come Friday, June 7.

“As part of the consolidated dispatch that Whiteside County is looking to do this summer – in August probably – Whiteside County will no longer be answering our nonemergency calls or after-hour utility calls,” Rock Falls City Administrator Robbin Blackert said.

On June 4, Rock Falls City Council members unanimously voted to contract with Daupler Inc. of Overland Park, Kansas, for $15,000 to answer nonemergency utility calls outside of regular business hours. The contract is for a one-year term starting June 7.

The cost will be covered by the electric, water and wastewater departments, with each providing $5,000, Blackert said.

“We are very pleased with the pricing,” she told council members. “We’re not happy we have to pay for this, don’t get me wrong, but we were expecting it to cost a lot more.”

The Rock Falls Utilities customer service office’s hours are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m Monday through Friday. It is located at the City Hall Complex, 603 W. 10th St., Rock Falls.

During business hours, people can call 815-622-1100 and press 2 in the phone tree, or call 815-622-1118 to contact the utilities customer service office.

For emergencies after hours, call 815-622-1140.

Whiteside County dispatchers in the Twin Cities Communication Center in Sterling have been the ones picking up calls to the utility office outside of its regular business hours, Blackert said after the meeting.

“When the electricity goes out or somebody thinks there’s a power line down, a tree in the road or there’s water in the road so a water main’s broken, all of a sudden they’ve got really rusty water – all those kinds of things [county dispatchers would pick up],” she said.

Whiteside County dispatchers no longer will pick up those calls, Blackert said. They now will be routed to one of Daupler Inc.’s five call centers in the U.S., she said.

“People are still going to call the number that they’re used to calling,” Blackert said. “That’s why this solution was awesome for us, because if they do, they call 622-1140, the nonemergency number that we’ve all had drilled into our brains for decades, and they’d go to [the] utilities [extension], that will go – after 5 p.m. or on a holiday or weekend – to our call center.”

People need to have a place to call, she said.

“There is nothing more frustrating than on a Friday night you have a problem [and] you can’t get ahold of anybody,” Blackert said. “That’s not right. So that was our main thing, that people have a number to call [where a person will pick up].”