Contact Lens - 2025 Contact Center Year in Review

Josef Rosenberg - Contact Center Manager, Utility Safety Partners

It’s been a long year, but really, I feel that way every year. It’s always a real treat to gather your wits about you, take a deep breath and spend some time reflecting on the progress you’ve made over the course of 12 months!

January began like most years. Cold, snowy, and with a sudden surge of excavation due to extended vacation periods over the December Holiday Break. After the first week, I took stock of how things were beginning to move sideways, steeled my resolve, and promptly flew to a warmer climate for a nominal amount of time.

Once they were able to find me and coax me back to the proverbial office, we made some strong headway in changing our internal CRM (Customer Resource Management) software vendor, and spinning up on that platform.

February always hits at a sprint. Hiring this season was similar to seasons past, though in recent years we’ve moved our entire process to be fully remote. Assessments, tests and interviews are performed on a PC or laptop (or sometimes, with more difficulty, a phone or tablet), and candidates are vetted thoroughly over the course of a grueling two interview process. Hiring begins with love, on or slightly before Valentine’s Day, and completes after a couple of weeks.

While in the midst of hiring, we spend much time reviewing documentation to ensure all policy and procedural changes are correct and current. In 2025, our hire group received notice at the end of the month, with a start date beginning in March.

After a spirited round of training in March, we released our new hires to engage with the wider digging community! April is a always a very special month, a time for everyone to get up to speed before the dreaded May season hits harder than a hurricane.

We had a relatively steady, but not overbearing summer interval. May, June and July were all typified by a manageable amount of work (that our employees handled with grace and aplomb). As a reward for their efforts, at the end of August we hosted a special game for all employees, a rousing customized trivia romp that gave out prizes to all participants! Suffice to say, it was received extremely well and left everyone wanting more.

Fall crept in quietly this year, with the digging season extending beyond Thanksgiving and Halloween, and into late November before we finally saw temperatures plummet, and snow stick around.

Sadly, we must usher 2025 to a close, a memorable season with a strong cadre of Agents that absolutely nailed the numbers (though there’s always room for improvement!) and made USP perform better than we have in years. Onward to 2026!