PWSA Senior Customer Service Coordinator Tishla Jones and her son Dario Jr.

PWSA’s Senior Customer Service Coordinator Tishla Jones supervises a staff of 13 representatives in order to maintain a standard of prompt, efficient, and courteous customer service. “I handle multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment and interact professionally with a diverse group of customers and staff,” said Tishla. On a daily basis, you can find her monitoring phone queues, assisting representatives with complex calls, and providing training to her staff as the department processes a considerable volume of inquiries concerning water quality and service, fees, and account balances, right to know requests, and more. 

Tishla began her career in customer service when she was 18 years old working in the credit card division of a department store. While seeking a new opportunity at age 23, she was curious enough to drop in to our old administration building at 441 Smithfield Street, where she applied to the position of Customer Service Representative I. Having climbed the PWSA ladder ever since, Tishla is now approaching her 16th year with the Authority. 

A homemade water filter crafted by Dario Jr. for his science fair project.

One of Tishla’s most significant accomplishments is helping to lower our contact center’s abandonment rate (ABR), which is the percentage of inbound phone calls made to our contact center that are abandoned by the customer before speaking to a representative, from a monthly average of between 14 and 17 percent to 3 percent or lower. Recently, her team has maintained an ABR between 2.2 and 2.7 percent with a low of 1.4 percent occurring in July 2019. In addition, she has implemented an accolade recognition system to boost call center morale and an incentive program that has allowed the representatives to work together to meet each other’s daily goals for call volume. “I give all thanks to a strong team who believes in my goals and strives to work with me to obtain a stellar outcome,” Tishla said.

Acting Senior Group Manager of Production George Watson explains to Dario Jr. the crucial process of measuring turbidity, aka cloudiness of water.

Outside of the office Tishla spends time with her four young children including her oldest, ten-year-old Dario Jr. Last year, Dario Jr. had the opportunity to tour our Aspinwall Water Treatment Plant to conduct research for his school science fair project, where he concluded that he could make his own water filter using common materials in an emergency situation when a water treatment plant isn’t available. Since then, Dario Jr. has continued his pursuit of a career in the sciences by being accepted to the National Youth Leadership Forum Pathways to STEM program. Regarding his passion for the sciences, Dario Jr. wrote “I don’t know why I just love exploring but it just intrigues me to learn and explore more about this beautiful world.” Although he wishes to be a detective when he grows up, we consider him a lifelong honorary member of Team PWSA. We are very grateful for Tishla’s public service and are thrilled to have played a small part in Dario Jr.’s journey.