Best Practices for Proactive Outbound Message Script Design (part 1 of 3)

  

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We've talked a lot about how important it is to communicate with your customers when their power goes out and the best practices on how and what to communicate with them.  Let's talk about some best practices for proactive outbound message script design.

There are many different notifications your utility can send out:

Whether you use your notification system to deliver outage notifications, billing messages, or service alerts, sending out a clear, consistent message is important.

Message should include elements such as:

• The originator of the message.
• The date/time the message is being sent.
• The type of message.  Identify the message as an outage notification, billing message, or service alert.
• The date and time the event happened or will happen.  Tell recipients if action should be taken immediately, soon or near future.
• The message should also include a description of the impacted area.
• Include ways for message recipients to obtain further information.  For example, direct the recipients to a website, information line, or tell them additional updates will be sent via this messaging system.

View some proactive outbound communication trends in the utility industry.

To read more best practices, view part 2 and part 3 of this series.  We've put together a message script tool kit for your benefit.  Make sure to check it out!