Using Software for Proactive Outage Communication
Image courtesy of Sam Petherbridge under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic Deed, resized to 700 x 391 pixels.
The ability to effectively manage expectations is critical when the lights go out, which is why utilities must strive to consistently engage in real-time, proactive outage communication. This practice allows customers, regulators, and other stakeholders to be kept informed, which if done effectively increases the odds that the power restoration effort will be well perceived. It also helps to reduce call volumes because customers will, in theory, have fewer questions they need to call about.
On the other hand, mismanaging expectations is sure to result in increased anger, dissatisfaction, and regulatory scrutiny.
How Utilities Can Optimize Proactive Outage Communication
Despite the importance of proactive outage communication, many utilities are not equipped to do this effectively. In fact, it is not uncommon for this to be a highly manual process.
For example, at many utilities someone in customer service would need to manually pull a list of impacted customers, which is typically a time-consuming process that is ripe for error. Then, someone else would manually craft & deploy the message, whether it be on the website outage map or more of a “push” tactic such as sending out a text alert.
Luckily, there are better ways to go about this, and it all comes down to technology. With the right tools, accurate, real-time data can quickly identify the impacted areas, automatically extract the list of impacted customers, and rapidly deploy text and/or email-based communications with the proverbial push of a button. Identifying the specific technologies that can be leveraged for this purpose is beyond the scope of this article, but these are easily identifiable online. But rest assured, they are out there, so please do your homework.
At the end of the day, customers and stakeholders deserve to be kept informed before, during and after a disruptive event. By utilizing the proper technology in a strategic manner, best-in-class, proactive outage communication can be achieved seamlessly.
