The Change Dude’s Blog

Disaster Communications

Hurricane Helene hit my hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida as well as much of the Gulf Coast, with a record storm surge.  Power in my neighborhood was down for four days and is still being repaired.  Our utility provider was prepared and ready to jump on the issues with hundreds, if not thousands, of technicians to get on the remediation actions.  Well, done!

We had access to an outage portal to report against and watch progress, sort of.  We had numbers to call for updates, sort of. We got SMS updates on progress, sort of.  The key here is sort of.  All the pieces are in place to communicate to ratepayers effectively again I say well, done.

Despite the readiness of the utility to respond and communicate I felt the result was anemic.  The first status update on my neighborhood for power to return was 36 hours post event, cool.  Well, that estimate passed and nothing was updated until about 24 hour later that power would be restored in about 6 hours, how exciting.  Yet another estimate was inaccurate and the following day there were no updates.  So basically, after the last update which was about 60 hours past the first update there had been no additional updates. I called customer service; they had no additional information other than the portal’s stale estimate. Hmm…no update, no trucks in the area, no power, no hope.

Miraculously, 96 hours after the initial estimate had passed, we had trucks in the neighborhood.  The portal status update remained stale.  Were these big trucks just visiting? I don’t know.

Without power the neighborhood went old school, people walking around asking each other what they knew.  We all knew the exact same information, absolutely nothing current. Being the proactive dude I am I asked the crew lead about their assignment. He was clear, they were sent to evaluate the issues and remediate.  Any timing update? Nope! They could fix the problems but had no control over energizing the power. OK then.  Still no change in status on the portal or an SMS update. Hmm…

Finally, with no warning over100 hours past the stale update we had power.  Amen!! Thank you, Mr. Utility Man.

Recommendations for Utilities

Customer experience management is my primary competency, I’ve been working with businesses to improve their customer experience for near 30 years.  I could not have been more disappointed with my utilities and their ratepayer communication during this disaster.  It was a big fat ZERO on a ten-point scale.  There was not one piece of useful information available during the outage other than we were in an outage area, already knew that piece.

Tips for Utilities

• Use the tools you have.  Have your teams update status for ratepayers at reliable intervals.  Even it there isn’t a change in status.  Hearing from you in anyway is a comfort.
• Be honest. If the end point for remediation is unknown, say that.  Try not to provide estimates based on pure speculation.
• Be present. Not having had a whiff of a utility truck in our area for four days after the event was disheartening. Our neighborhood felt forgotten. Send an ambassador or some sort to give comfort that you exist with a physical presence.

I can’t say enough about the competency of the utilities in solving the myriad of problems when a natural disaster occurs.  They do incredible work around the clock.  With a few little communication tweaks my personal ratepayer experience would have been so much better.

October 2, 2024 - Posted by thechangedude | Uncategorized | communication, customer-expereince, energy