THOMASVILLE — CNS, a division of Thomasville Utilities, continues to grow in its markets, city staff said.

Sherri Nix, director of customer support, gave a presentation to Thomasville City Council at its Monday workshop on increases in its television, Internet and telephone services in 2008.

“We are proud to serve our community and we strive to offer the best customer service possible,” Nix said Tuesday. “Hopefully the number of calls and amount of growth we had in 2008 represents that we are providing good customer service for our community.”

These utilities are offered to Cairo, Camilla, Moultrie and Thomasville residents because these cities all make up the CNS coverage area.

There were 685 new television customers, 828 new Internet customers and 1,910 new phone customers last year, Nix said.

Thomasville toed the line on phone and Internet hookups with 1,331 new phone and 503 Internet customers.

“It is amazing to see that much growth,” Lynn Williams, assistant city manager of customer service, said at the workshop.

Williams said Tuesday the city is eyeing some telephone service expansions this year and it has just expanded out to the Ga. 202 area for all three services.

In customer care, staff answered approximately 169,000 calls in 2008, Nix said.

It averaged 11,500 calls per month to the call center and 2,600 per month to technical support lines.

These calls created approximately 36,000 work orders in 2008, an average of 3,000 per month.

Councilman Max Beverly said he recently had need of tech support and found it to be a positive experience. He said those who handled the situation were “good and really helpful.”

Customers help support CNS, officials said.

Williams said Tuesday this allows CNS to offer services at “a very competitive rate” and, in turn, CNS services are able to transfer money to the general fund.

“Our goal for the new telephony service for the year was approximately 2,600 customers and we have already exceeded that goal. We’ve seen our Internet customers grow along with telephone. Rose.net is transferring $400,000 to general fund and telephony, as new as it is (it was started in 2007), is already budgeted to transfer $200,000 this year.”

This $600,000 alone will help fund services such as police and public works, Williams said.

“Those are dollars we don’t have to collect in taxes,” she said.

For more information on Thomasville Utilities or CNS, call 227-7001.