Dispatch Specialist I

Nebraska Public Power District • Norfolk, NE

51d • $22 • Onsite

About The Position

Incumbent will receive after-hours emergency and customer service calls and will dispatch and monitor service personnel and/or work crews for partner utilities associated with the District’s after-hours call answering service. This position will receive after-hours emergency and customer service calls for District and partner utility customers, send signals to reconnect or disconnect customers, and document customer interactions. Real-time monitoring requires knowledge and immediate action of emergency protocols per utility. Focus on call taking, dispatching, and monitoring will be prioritized by workload per District protocols. Various reporting is required by this position. Incumbents may be required to provide coverage for shifts other than his or her normally assigned shift.  Assignment to this position, and a condition of continued employment, will be the ability to arrive from your residence to the Centralized Customer Care Center within 30 minutes of notification of a call-out.

Requirements

• High school diploma/GED plus two years of experience in customer service or dispatching is required.
• Excellent keyboarding skills (minimum of 35 words per minute), completion of written and grammar skills test, and the ability to present oneself in a professional manner is required.
• Successfully pass the Specialist progression program requirements, as outlined in the program.
• Experience working with customers through operational support, retail business, sales, or a utility-specific company is required.
• Experience in Windows-based software including, but not limited to, Excel, Word, Outlook, and Teams applications is required.
• Assignment to this position and a condition of continued employment will be the ability to arrive from your residence to the Centralized Customer Care Center within 30 minutes of notification of a call-out.

Nice To Haves

• Experience dispatching service personnel in any industry is highly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Provide excellent customer service to Retail, Corporate, and after-hours answering partner customers by providing knowledge-based solutions through Corporate and business unit policies and procedures to ensure the customer's and the District's best interests are met. Respond to internal and external customer requests using written and oral communications. Take appropriate action for partner utilities and District customers when contacted by 911, emergency response personnel, police, sheriff, state patrol, or any other law enforcement agency and emergency locates.
• Operate a two-way radio and phone system to dispatch and monitor line technicians and/or work crews. Provide all pertinent information when switching is required to restore service to customers, as needed. Administer the Outage Management System for partner utilities and District Operations crews and generate ad-hoc outage reports as necessary. Provide system security or Operations functional support as deemed appropriate by the supervisor. Real-time monitoring requires knowledge and immediate action of emergency protocols per utility, which may include law enforcement or emergency responder support.
• Assess outage situations across multiple substations, feeders, and phases for multiple partner utilities and determine when to contact or dispatch additional service personnel or return service responsibility of the outage back to the partner utility through communication with their Operations Manager.
• In large outage situations, provide reports to the Operations Managers and return calls to customers confirming restoration of power at the request of the partner utility personnel.
• During significant weather events, manage multiple outages as storms move across the state affecting more than one partner utility for prolonged periods.
• Provide proficient use and extensive knowledge of District systems to record, identify, and generate necessary documentation and tickets for District Retail, Corporate, and after-hours answering service partner customers. Document and enter technician on-call schedule information in the Outage Management Systemper instructions provided by partner utilities via email, fax, or telephone contact.
• Accountable for other duties as assigned.

Benefits

• Nebraska Public Power District offers a competitive starting salary and an excellent benefits package including medical and dental insurance, 401K retirement plan, paid holidays, paid vacation, paid medical, training opportunities and more.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: High school or GED
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees