4 Best Practice Suggestions For Proactive Outbound Communications

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TFCC has found that customers are more satisfied with their energy provider if the utility uses a proactive approach to customer communications. Here are a few best practice suggestions to help you provide better customer service during outage situations.

1. Ask Caller If They Would Like a Callback - Customer satisfaction studies reflect significant improvement when the power company provides a restoration callback to confirm that power has been restored.  Asking the customer for permission is a courtesy that can allow the customer to state if they would like a callback regardless of the time of day/night. 
   
   Additionally, the callback can be used as a tool for the crew to confirm that all power has been restored downstream before rolling the trucks away. As more and more customers rely on their cell phone, TFCC can also help you send text messages instead of phone callbacks.  
2. Power Restoration Callback - Calling customers once their power is restored is a very positive way to touch the customer and improve satisfaction. It catches any stray customer outages while the crew may be nearby.
3. Status Callback with Updated Outage Information - This is a courtesy call that increases customer satisfaction by pushing information to the customer instead of the customer calling back into the call center. 
4. Flag for Special Needs Customers - This is another opportunity to increase customer satisfaction by offering special needs customers a chance to talk with a rep after reporting their outage or to flag their outage ticket so it can be prioritized based on medical needs.