Rapid Response Case Study | Scaling Customer Support During a Storm

Ensuring Responsive Service in Ice and Snow

There’s no denying the swath of devastation that storms and natural disasters cut through North America year after year. To sustain quality customer service, business preparedness and peak performance are vital throughout such recurring events; before, during and after.

Supporting a major U.S. utility, Working Solutions, a leader in onshore contact center outsourcing, ensured uninterrupted service during the 2026 Winter Storm Fern.

The Challenge

Maintaining Service at Scale

The predicted storm posed multiple threats: snow and freezing rain, combined with sleet and ice lasting over the weekend. The day before it all began, the National Weather Service issued a winter-storm warning, while states declared emergencies to aid recovery efforts.

As conditions escalated, the utility faced the challenge of maintaining responsive customer service amid widespread outages and surging demand.

Surge in Call Volume

Time-Sensitive Service Needs

Risk to Customer Satisfaction

Readiness isn't just a plan, it’s a practice. Working Solutions builds situational awareness into every engagement, preparing agents to perform under pressure, no matter the forecast.

For weather-driven surges like Winter Storm Fern, our team trains year-round, continually refreshing frontline skills to ensure rapid, reliable response when moments matter most.

We focus on what counts:

Answering customer calls in under 30 seconds
Practicing critical scenarios so agents are always mission-ready

While other BPOs often need up to 10 days to ramp, we were live in just 4 hours, ensuring seamless coverage from the start of the storm.

When the crisis hit, 300 agents, trained, proven, and virtually deployed, were already supporting customers without interruption.

The Results

Reliable Service When It Mattered Most

In some areas, ice, more than half an inch thick, downed power lines, causing widespread outages and substantial damage.

Despite severe conditions, support agents mobilized quickly and maintained strong performance, achieving 94% adherence.

For the client, nearly 8,500 customer calls, both emergency and routine, were handled. In total, agents logged more than 1,400 hours over four days, ensuring customers received timely and reliable support throughout the crisis.

You don’t achieve great results without being ready ahead of time. The client committed to excellent service in the storm, and their customers benefited.

For Any Eventuality: Working Solutions Delivers Nonstop Service

With 30 years of experience, Working Solutions shows up when it counts. During Winter Storm Fern, a massive weather event across the U.S., Canada and Mexico in January 2026, a major utility turned to us for rapid, scalable support.

In just four days, our onshore team handled nearly 8,500 calls with a 4.75-minute average handle time. Hold times averaged only 0.14 minutes, with after-call work at 0.67, highlighting the speed and precision of our first-responder-trained agents.