Havasu call center keeps East Coast businesses operating through hurricane

Lake Havasu Citys United Call Center (UCC) is helping clients located on the East Coast keep its businesses running despite the disastrous effects of Hurricane Sandy.

Since the hurricane hit landfall earlier this week, UCC has been providing customer service support to hundreds of clients who are working through the hurricane aftermath, Operations Manager Sandra Rademacher said in a UCC press release. For business clients in the areas hardest hit, such as New Jersey, they are facing challenging issues such as transportation, no electricity, destroyed local offices and employees who lost homes because of flooding or fires.

UCC call center representatives handle everything for clients, which include taking messages and forwarding them to the appropriate personnel, placing orders and setting up appointments. UCC provides clients with representatives who answers calls for them 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

For example, one of UCCs clients, a generator sales and service company, has continued selling generators to those in need in spite of its local office being closed because of the storm, according to the release. The client transferred its sales calls directly to UCC and sold more than two million worth of generators so far. UCC has fielded more than 20,000 calls for them, Rademacher said in the release. Because those generators are shipped from a California distribution center, hurricane victims can get the generators, the release stated.

Also, another client, a large medical company in New Jersey, evacuated its office because of Hurricane Sandy, but were able to continue assisting patients by phone because they had all calls transferred to the UCC call center, the release said. Call center representatives booked future appointments or took messages for the patients and forwarded them (by text, phone or pager) to a medical professional that could call back as needed.

Other companies that have benefited from having an outsourced call center like UCC available during a tragedy, such as Hurricane Sandy, have been handyman services and disaster recovery companies that have helped with flood and fire damage.

UCC also has assisted clients with employee communications. Employees are able to call their companys main line, which is forwarded to the UCC call center, and receive timely information regarding their payroll pick up location and when business will be operating locally again.

United Call Center has been providing call center services to its customers since 1989. All services are performed at its call center locations here in Lake Havasu City at 2849 Maricopa Ave. and at a smaller office in Riverside, Calif. for government contracts.

Also helping the East Coast in the recovery process, Arizona utility crews are also headed out to help in Hurricane Sandy relief efforts courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

More than 20 Air Force planes were expected to fly in and out of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport beginning Friday to take the crews and its heavy trucks to New York.

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Havasu call center keeps East Coast businesses operating through hurricane