Tollway could bring customer call center home

Illinois Tollway leaders may join the DIY trend by moving the agency's customer service center in-house.

The do-it-yourself idea surfaced Thursday as tollway directors asked questions about a $16.7 million increase in a contract with the company that handles calls on I-PASS accounts and violations.

Pennsylvania-based TransCore's three-year contract to run the customer service center with the tollway ends in December. The original deal was for $29.5 million and the company's other duties included reviewing images of license plates, processing violation notices, receiving payments and distributing transponders.

But the volume of I-PASS users exceeded expectations and a backlog of cases related to delays and mix-ups involving violation notices added to the workload, officials said.

Tollway Director Steven Harris asked if the $16.7 million was budgeted for, which it was, and drew attention to discrepancies between initial projections and eventual results.

The tollway used 2005 data when it developed the customer service center contract requirements. However, a 2005 baseline of 20 million license images to be reviewed annually was far different from the actual volume - 45.7 million images in 2007 and 68.3 million in 2008.

Violation notices that numbered 800,000 in 2005 shot up to 3.6 million in 2008. The amount of time spent on the phone with customers totaled 14.1 million minutes in 2008 compared to 9 million in 2005.

Tollway authorities said they are working through the backlog and asked staff to report in February on the pros and cons of continuing to outsource the customer service center or having the agency operate it.

"We need to strike the right balance between in-house and outsourcing," Tollway Chairman John Mitola said. "Obviously, this is a major area that needs to be more than fine-tuned, it needs to be re-engineered."

In 2005, the tollway had only eight Open Road Tolling plazas operating compared to 24 in 2007.