Dial 71: That's pipeline to UB's unflappable troubleshooters

Leaky pipes. Burnt-out lightbulbs. A pigeon in the stairwell. Who're you going to call?

Forget Ghostbusters. Dial 71.

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, University Facilities' Customer Service department trouble-shoots the problems of UB's physical plant.

"The office receives 15,000 to 20,000 work requests each year," said Michael Dupre, interim associate vice president for university services.

The calls the office receives cover a wide range of needs, including requests for mechanical, carpentry, custodial, heating and cooling, and electrical services. Located in the Beane Center on the North Campus, the Customer Service office is staffed from 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays; after-hours calls are forwarded to the Chilled Water Plant, providing the university with round-the-clock emergency service.

"We get a lot of moving calls when people are moving things in their offices or changing offices," said Jeanine Kankiewicz, who has been answering the Customer Service telephones at UB since July 1997. "There's always emergency plumbing calls for a clogged toilet or a water leak. We get a lot of carpentry - door closers aren't working, hanging shelves, that kind of thing. We get the calls about lack of electrical power, custodial calls to replace light bulbs and shampoo rugs."

The services that University Facilities provides are the nuts and bolts of keeping an institution such as UB running.

The commitment to a job well done doesn't end once the leak stops or power has been restored. A follow-up system of customer-service surveys provides the office with a steady stream of feedback on the work that's been completed.

"Each person who makes a customer-service request receives a follow-up survey" asking whether the customer was kept informed about the progress of the job and whether the service was performed in a timely manner, said Dupre.

The feedback received indicates a high level of satisfaction with the work and the people who do it.

According to recent customer-satisfaction surveys, 95 percent to 98 percent of respondents indicated an acceptable response time and nearly 100 percent said the University Facilities employees they worked with were pleasant. Customers also gave University Facilities high marks for communicating with them.

"We get a lot of real nice compliments back," Kankiewicz said.

Not all of the calls they receive are within their purview, but the three customer-service representatives who answer the telephones do their best to help, she added.

"Sometimes people dial 71 to ask about things "like, 'why were the flags at half mast today?' They don't know who else to call, so they call us," Kankiewicz said.

A certain amount of intuition helps field the unusual calls, but it's more important, she said, to "listen carefully.

"We'll help if we can. If we don't know the answer, we'll find out. Sometimes we get calls that we don't have anything to do with, but we can refer the callers to the appropriate office."

"Service really permeates what we do," said Dupre. "That's why we're here."

Customer service has been University Facilities' mission for a number of years, according to Dupre.

"We made customer service a focus starting in the early 1990s, following the culture that was emerging at the time." The front office, he added, was renamed to reflect that emphasis and performance appraisals for University Facilities employees were rewritten to include the importance of customer service.

"It's an expectation of all employees, not just those who answer the phones," Dupre emphasized.

Attention to service "is how we handle the work all through University Facilities," he said.

"Our philosophy is we're here for the students, faculty and staff."