Dominion Virginia Power is improving the capabilities of its call centers to provide customers with all the information they need quickly and easily, no matter what language they speak.

The company has made it easier and faster for Spanish-speaking customers to conduct business by adding more Spanish-speaking agents. It also has significantly increased its use of home-based customer care associates to speed its ability to handle large volumes of calls, while ensuring the safety of these employees during major storms.

"We receive more than seven million telephone calls a year," said Gianna Clark, vice president-Customer Service Operations. "Four million of them are handled by our customer care centers and three million are handled through our interactive voice response system. No matter how the calls come in, we want to make it the best possible experience for all of our customers."

With increasing numbers of foreign language calls coming in, the company is focusing on how to improve its multi-lingual capabilities in a way that would ensure excellent customer service while minimizing cost.

Dominion undertook a detailed analytical process to identify exactly what improvements would bring the most effective results at the least cost. It led Dominion to refine its automated system for in-coming calls and utilize more Spanish-speaking associates instead of a translation service. As a result, the company is handling greater numbers of Spanish-speaking customers than ever and doing it in a faster and more customer-friendly way.

The company has handled more than 80,000 foreign language calls this year, with 96 percent of those being Spanish. Calls have also come in French, Korean, Farsi, Tigrinya, Bengali, Nepali, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cambodian, Cantonese, Arabic, Burmese, Portuguese, Urdu, Japanese and German. A translation firm assists with calls in those languages.

A second important area of improvement the company focused on was its ability to respond quickly to the numerous outage calls that come in during major storm events. The company already had a number of home-based customer service associates who, with specialized equipment at home, could handle calls immediately.

"When our customer care associates don't have to travel to work during sudden major storms, they can be immediately accessible to our customers 24-7," said Clark. "A full 50 percent of our associates are now home based and readily available to help our customers, and our employees have a better work-life balance."