Collaboration Creates Cohesive New York Water Customer Service Team
New York Water is excited to open a local customer service center that will allow customers to access information about their accounts and get answers to their questions from a local team, dedicated to our water customers. As part of the acquisition of American Water, Liberty New York Water committed to opening a local customer service center to provide improved customer service to our Long Island customers. To do this, and achieve our customer satisfaction goals, it was determined that we needed to hire a team.
Our recruitment began internally, emailing our New York Water employees a link to the job postings and encouraging them to share with friends and family, as we knew our fantastic employees would only bring us more fantastic employees. To be thorough, we also posted the positions to our career site.
Applications rolled in and interviews took place over a two-month period, allowing us to begin training the first hires in July. The second half of the team joined us at the beginning of August and the entire team has since become a cohesive group, throughout their intensive training period, leading up to their go live date in November.
As the Senior Manager, Customer Service, I oversee the entire customer service team for New York Water and recruiting employees who care about helping our callers was my top priority. The team we have in place is enthusiastic and eager to learn. They have toured our plants, listened to presentations from managers in all areas of the business, and they have practiced answering calls. When our call center opens in November, they will have the knowledge needed to answer customer questions. This was our goal – to minimize the number of calls a customer needs to make and to have the answers ready for them.
It is important to have local customer service representatives who understand the geographical area we serve and can relate to the customers. This will allow them to make connections and respond to inquiries appropriately.
Through collaboration with managers and the human resources team, we now have a customer service department that we are confident will be successful and make a difference in our communities.
- Rose Squeglia-Mongello – Senior Manager, Customer Service
You can also read the stories from two individuals involved in the recruiting and hiring process of the New York team below:
My name is Giovanna Fregapane, and I am a Talent Specialist with Liberty. Earlier in the year, I was given the initiative to lead the recruitment efforts in staffing our New York, Merrick call center. I really enjoyed working with the hiring leaders and learned a lot about our New York teammates through this process. Through our perseverance, constant communication, and high paced rate of work, we were able to fill all our openings within a month. The team is now fully staffed, and I am so happy to know that our new hires are enjoying their new roles and being a part of the Liberty family.
- Giovanna Fregapane, Talent Specialist
I was excited to apply for a job at Liberty after hearing about their Customer Service Department opening in Long Island. I saw this as a great chance to explore their careers opportunities. The application process was a very straightforward process.
Here I am on my third week at Liberty, and everyone has been so welcoming and helpful. They all seem to share the same goals and have a sense of purpose within the company. Everybody seems happy and valued, making me feel the same way. It has been an incredible experience for me. I am very eager and excited about what the future holds for me at Liberty.
- Jorgina Sarmiento, Customer Service Representative