By Cathy Racicot
Every member of the Harrison REMC team brings their own set of skills and qualifications to the co-op. By working together, all office and field employees contribute to Harrison REMC’s mission to provide reliable, safe and affordable energy to all co-op members.
Harrison REMC’s member services team are the behind-the-scenes frontline of the cooperative. These seven are the friendly voices that members hear when they call in to pay their bill, ask questions or seek information about various services.
Though answering the phone is a significant portion of the day for all of the member service representatives (MSRs), they also have some specific jobs and tasks that they are responsible for performing. Dee Zollman, Karen Albin and Candice Reynolds focus mainly on service orders. This includes working with our operations area on setting up new services, such as new construction and transferring services. They also handle most of the capital credit questions and processes.
Brandi Cannon, Priscilla Whitman, Sara Perkins and Natalie Ward focus mainly on the billing aspects. This ranges from processing billing to ACH and auto payments. The billing team ensures all members receive accurate bills and that payments are processed efficiently.
Member Service Representative Karen Albin has seen a lot of changes in her 32 years of service. “Everything has become so much more efficient. I remember when we had to write out everything, and all the paper we had to utilize to complete our work. So many things are done online now — from new member paperwork to paying bills online.”
The duties of this team are essential to the cooperative. When a large outage occurs, it is all hands on deck to cover answering the phones and entering outages into the outage management system. The co-op prides itself on the fact that during these times, such as when a severe storm hits, members hear a friendly and reassuring voice.
Many MSRs state that their favorite part of the job is to solve any issues a member may have; this is evident in the continued high customer satisfaction scores that the co-op receives.
“Our dedicated team provides frontline support to other departments in the co-op,” said Lead MSR Brandi Cannon. “We are focused on providing excellent service to the membership each day — that’s what cooperatives do.”
CATHY RACICOT is communication manager at Harrison REMC.
