Agenda - 11-16-1982 - Laserfiche WebLink

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MEMO• Kenneth R. Thompson, County Manager YRON: Mark H, Rees J Purchasing & Central Servicecl' DAU: November 16, 1982 RE: Recent Telephone Problems County offices in Hillsborough have recently been plagued with recurring telephone difficulties resulting in a great many complaints from the public. The must common of these complaints is that the caller lets the phone ring for a long period of time before the central switchboard answers the phone, if the call, is answered at a/1. An investigation of these complaints by the Purchasing Department revealed the following causes: 1) For two pelFiods of several days, each during the month of October, some of the foreign exchange lines between Hillsborough and Chapel Hill and Hillsborough and Durham were out of order. On one of the occasions the difficulties were caused by wet cable lines and during the other period one Chapel Hill line was not working because of broken relay in the Centel Telephone office and another line was not working because of a blown computer card in the County system. The result of these line failures was that the caller heard the phone ringing but the call never showed on the switchboard. 2) During certain hours of the day, the number of phone calls coming into the switchboard simultaneously exceeded the ability of the switchboard operator to answer all calls within a reasonable amount of time. Attached i the result of survey of incoming phone calls that was taken during the n*nth of October. This problem is further aggravated by the following conditions. First, there is a bottle neck of sorts at the Social Services Department, where they have only two single line phones taking the calls for some fifty other extentions, The second condition is the necessity of the switchboard operator to ask the incoming caller certain questions for the Tax Departments and the Clerk of Courts offices, thus backing up other incoming calls. The Purchasing Department has taken the following steps to rectify the above problems: 1) In regards to technical problems with the lines, the department will work closely with the telephone companies to quickly correct any future line problems as soon as they are identified as such. 2) For the geeral over loading of the switchboard the following action has been taken: a) The switchboard operator will no longer interrogate callers for the Clerk of Courts and the Tax offices. b) A key phone allowing for the handling of multiple phone calls has been puk.chased for the Social Services Department. In addition, calls coming in to the old Social Services Department number, 732-9361 and 968-4501 will be automatically transfered to Social Services by the central switchboard during periods of overcrowding.