TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS FOR AFTER-HOURS PROFESSIONAL ANSWERING SERVICES

1. SCOPE OF SERVICES

1.1 The City of Tampa (City) intends to contract with a company to provide Professional Answering Services (Services) currently needed by the Mobility & Water Departments. The service is needed to answer calls to the City after normal business hours Monday through Friday, all day Saturday and Sunday, all day on Holidays, and during Emergencies. The calls received require immediate action to provide for the safety and well-being of the public. The required Services to be performed are answering, assigning, dispatching, reporting and recording /documenting all calls in accordance with City procedures and protocols. Services shall be conducted in the United States, preferably in the Tampa Bay Area.

1.11.1 The City’s Mobility & Water Department receives approximately 1200 inbound/outbound calls per month.

2. SERVICE REQUIREMENTS

2.1 The Awardee shall provide a person to answer multiple calls for the Departments during the designated hours of service needed by the City. Answering machines will not be accepted.

2.3 It is further noted that the Awardee should be ready at any time to provide continuous service on a 24-hour, 365 day per year, basis during the award period if deemed necessary by the City, including state of emergencies, planned and unplanned events The awarded Vendor shall be notified immediately, by phone and in writing, if any of these circumstances occur.

2.4 When providing answering service for multiple telephone lines, the Awardee's Agents must be able to determine from which telephone line an incoming call was transferred (i.e., the telephone number to which the call was initially placed).

2.5 The City will notify the Awardee of the dates and times telephone answering service shall be in effect.

2.6 The Awardee shall be required to change the call out list of the City's employees upon request. This change may occur weekly or more often as conditions require.

2.7 The Awardee will be required to become familiar with the Mobility and Water Department’s operations, activities and procedures (i.e., traffic signal maintenance and repair, street maintenance, stormwater management, drawbridge openings, etc.) in order to be able to make a determination as to who to contact regarding specific situations/problems. To avoid any confusion or misunderstanding, and to ensure that all requests receive immediate attention, the Awardee will be given detailed instructions on proper emergency and non-emergency notification procedures.

2.8 Upon receiving a call, the Operator shall obtain as much information as possible from the caller relative to the situation. After being advised of the situation, the Operator shall immediately contact the designated contact at the City to determine the appropriate action which may include dispatching to qualified personnel to address the situation. The appropriate personnel to whom calls/emails will be directed will be dictated by the nature of the requests and information received from the callers. The City will provide the Awardee with a list of the names, telephone numbers and emails of personnel, including their respective areas of responsibility, who are available on a 24-hour, 7 day a week basis, and who may be contacted concerning response on-call service. While being concise, the Operator shall accurately describe the situation encountered and/or the nature of the action/service requested by the caller. The City will update this list on an as-needed basis to ensure the Awardee has the most updated information.

2.9 In the event the responsible individual cannot be immediately reached or is unable to respond, messages may be left on voicemail/answering machines/services; however, the Operator shall continue to contact other individuals until an available person is reached. Individuals shall be contacted in the order that they appear on the list. As the Operator goes down the list, the Operator will note the time each call is made and whether the response was "no answer", "line busy", “voicemail box full”, "individual not at home", "individual responding", "individual did not want to respond", or "individual returning call". Calls shall be followed by an Email in order to have a documentation trail.

2.10 It is imperative that all calls be handled immediately. The Awardee shall have professional, adequate, efficient, and courteous Operators to effectively accommodate all calls and provide the required service. Incoming calls shall not be placed on hold for an excessive period of time (over one minute) on a continual basis. Repeated failure on the part of the Awardee to comply with these requirements may result in termination of the contract.

2.11 The answering service shall not exceed 15 minutes in any situation (from call input to dispatching the call. All calls that exceed 15 minutes shall be documented and an email shall be sent to City Representative explaining the reason of the call, the outcome and why the delay.

2.11 During the term of the award, the Tampa Police Department or Tampa Fire Rescue may call for services to be performed by the Mobility & Water Department. These calls shall be handled as a priority.

2.12 The Awarded Vendor shall provide bilingual interpretation in English and Spanish. All other languages are preferred, but optional.

• By Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) also known as relay service or IP-relay (English and Spanish)

2.13 Services must be performed 365 days per year, including holidays and weekends.

· Weekdays 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.

· Weekends beginning Friday at 4:30 p.m. to Monday at 7:30 a.m.

· Holidays 24 hours per day

· Emergency as required Note: Hours are subject to change based on the needs of the City.

2.13.1 The City’s Holidays can be obtained by going to: https://www.tampagov/info/city-holidays It is the Awardee’s responsibility to obtain the City’s holiday schedule at the beginning of each calendar year.

2.13.2 Emergency Services. Emergency services shall be as required by the City: and the City shall notify the vendor within 24 hours of such occurrence.

2.13.4 Telephone Numbers. The following numbers must be utilized. They are:

City of Tampa TSS Department telephone number: 813-274-3101 and City of Tampa Water Department: 813-274-8811

2.14 Any changes in telephone numbers or the addition of other telephone lines will be preceded by written notice to the Awardee at least one week prior to the effective date of the change or addition.

2.15 Awardee shall be responsible for ensuring that daily scripts are up-to-date and accurate on a daily basis.

2.16 Vendor shall provide a dedicated Representative to the City during this contract period at no additional cost to the City. The dedicated representative shall be able to handle any concerns, questions, etc. from customers. The Awarded Vendor’s contact information shall be provided to the City upon award. The Vendor’s Representative shall be present for all meetings, oversee daily operations and escalate issues as deemed necessary, to City Representatives, and communicate any outages based on customer complaints immediately to the City Representative.

2.17 All communication between the City and awarded vendor shall be documented at all times. Depending on the urgency of the request, a phone call is permitted but shall be followed by an email at all times.

2.18 Awarded vendor shall have the capability of text messaging of messaging via Microsoft Teams at any time during this contract. 3. AWARDEE RESPONSIBILITIES The Awardee will be responsible for providing the following:

3.1 Completed Calls consist of the following:

· Incoming calls will consist of customer calls for reporting the need for emergency services or situations.

· Outgoing calls will consist of the Operator calling the City’s Designated Contact(s) and calling the Customer on request of the City’s Designated Contact.

· Confirm incoming calls are for City of Tampa Service Area.

· Email and/or text of the Customer call to the City’s Designated Contract afterwards.

3.1.1 Incoming Calls. The following information is required of each call: • Verification the call is for the City of Tampa service area.

· Date and Time of incoming call.

· Person taking the call.

· Full Name of Caller.

· Address.

· Telephone Number.

· Reason for Call.

· Type of Service needed.

· Action Taken.

3.1.2 Outbound Calls. The following information is required

· Date and Time of the outbound call.

· Person dispatching the call.

· Name of City’s Designated Contact On-Duty.

· Name of City’s Designated Contact call was dispatched to.

· Number of times City Designated Contact was called.

· Confirmation of verbal contact with City Designated Contact. • Electronic contact. (Email and/or Text)

3.2 Call Reports. Call reports per Department must clearly reflect the following information:

· Date call taken

· Time call received

· Type of service required (Call Type)

· Time call dispatched to Technician

· Duration of call

· Customer Name

· Customer Address

· Customer telephone number

· Details of call (Action/Service requested and Location)

· Information provided to customer (Call Description)

· Name of Technician call was dispatched to

· Name(s) of any other personnel on the call-out list who were contacted but were unable to respond, and the order in which they were contacted.

· Confirmation of verbal contact with City’s Designated Contact.

· Confirmation of electronic contact with City’s Designated Contact.

The Awardee shall furnish to the City on a daily basis, a complete and comprehensive record of all calls, preferably in XML format. Call Reports for all calls received and dispatched must be sent by email daily per Department. For the Mobility Services Department no later than 8:00 AM (EST) to their specified designated contacts.

3.2 Monetary deductions for breach or non-compliance. It is the objective of the City to obtain full performance of services in accordance with the terms of the specifications, and at the quality standards of work set forth in this award. To this end, the City is awarding for the complete performance of each department’s service requirements as identified in the specifications, and deductions will, therefore, be made in accordance with the following stipulation:

A monetary deduction of $25.00 per day shall be assessed by the City for non-compliance of the daily reports and/or completed calls not received by the times specified above and will continue daily until such deficiencies or non-compliance is corrected to the satisfaction of the City.

In the event the Awardee, for any reason whatsoever, consistently fails to perform work to the quality required on the technical specifications of this award, the City reserves the right to make deductions in accordance with the rate above. Five deductions within a one month period may result in notice of termination proceedings and award to the next lowest, responsible bidder or be rebid.

3.3 Call records must remain in archive for a minimum of 60 days.

3.4 The Awardee shall maintain an audio recording of each call archived with the ability to easily retrieve the call and email to the appropriate City of Tampa management upon request.

3.5 The City Technician’s telephone number must not be given to the caller for any reason or condition.

3.6 Communicate effectively with City of Tampa customers and on-call Technicians for expedient and efficient delivery call information and services.

3.7 The Awardee shall not revise the Mobility Services customized answering service protocols and response methods without prior written approval from identified City Designated Contact(s).

4. CITY RESPONSIBILITIES

Each City Department shall:

· Provide Awardee with written Departments protocol and procedures to be followed.

· Provide Awardee with designated telephone numbers.

· Provide Awardee, on a monthly basis, a list of on-call City Technicians and their shifts per Department.

· Notify Awardee of any (last minute) changes to the on-call list as soon as possible (in the event of illness, emergencies, etc.)

· Provide Awardee with a list of telephone/contact numbers to be used.

· Notify Awardee in event where the Departments closes due to an emergency.

5. METHOD OF PAYMENT

5.1 Fees shall be full compensation for all material, equipment, personnel, labor and facilities required to carry out a call transaction and email. For the purpose of payment, the following constitutes a completed call transaction:

· Answering/documenting the initial incoming call.

· Contacting/documenting appropriate City personnel based on the information obtained from the caller.

· Contacting/documenting each subsequent call until the first available qualified person is contacted.

· Answering/documenting call back from personnel responding to request.

· Placing a call back to customer upon request of the City.

· Emails in order to have a documentation trail.

Note: Payment will not be made to the Awardee for incomplete call transactions.

6. BIDDER QUALIFICATIONS

The Bidder must submit the following with their bid.

6.1 Bidder shall submit with their bid a brief history of the organization and the number of years in business.

6.2 Bidder shall provide a minimum of three (3) references Bidder is currently providing services similar to the City. Include, Company/Individual name, contact person, email address, number of years servicing the client. The City shall have the right to contact said references for the purpose of investigating the Bidder's competency, responsibility, qualifications, and experience.

6.3 Bidder shall thoroughly describe its capability to perform/facilitate the services required, to include methodology and approach to servicing the City.

6.4 Bidder shall address in its response the time needed to setup the City’s accounts to begin accepting after-hour calls.

6.5 Bidder shall address the number of employee’s it would dedicate to this effort and a list of equipment the company owns to meet the requirements described herein.

6.6 In order to be considered for this procurement, Bidders must meet all the above qualification requirements. Bidders which do not meet all of the above qualifications will be disqualified from further consideration for award.

7. OPERATORS

a. How many Bilingual operators are available for this contract?

b. How many operators will be available on staff during:

i. Normal Business Hours

ii. After-Hours

iii. Weekends

iv. City Holidays

8. PRICING

8.1 Vendor shall bill the City upon the Bid Line Items provided

8.2 Vendor shall provide the City with all billable options (i.e. by the minute, by the call, etc.)

8.3 Vendor shall provide the City with billing structure outside of normal scope of work (i.e. Emergency services, planned outages, unplanned outages, etc.)