People can track when their groceries will be delivered through a mobile app or when their meal will be ready to pick up from a restaurant via text notification.
Why not deliver the same experience to utility customers?
Fearless, along with Deloitte, is working with Exelon Utilities to keep customers informed about when their power goes out and when it will return. The BGE Outage Tracker that we helped develop does just that, providing proactive outage information and reporting.
Creating the BGE Outage Tracker.
As part of the Outage Journey team, Fearless Product Designer Megan Gileza conducted customer research on how people want to interact with Exelon when there are outages and disruptions in service. This team is part of Exelon Utilities' larger Team Digital, which uses human-centered design and automation to drive outcomes within web, mobile, and voice experiences.
“We rolled out a lot of surveys in collaboration with the BGE market insights team to get quantitative representative data," Megan said. "The surveys gathered information about:
- Notification preferences,
- Outage experiences,
- Where customers think BGE can do better,
- What they want to receive in terms of notifications.
That includes everything from: ‘Do you want a text or an email?’ to ‘Do you want us to snooze your texts during the night?’”
Megan and the team learned that customers wanted more personalized interactions and to have more proactive engagement about the power restoration journey. To better serve customers and meet their needs, the Outage Journey team developed the BGE Outage Tracker.
What the Outage Tracker does.
The top goal of the Outage Tracker is to answer key customer questions such as: “Does BGE know my power is out?” “When will my power be back on?” and “What caused my outage?”
To help answer questions like these, the Outage Tracker enables users to track the status of their power. The tool:
- Shows which step of the process users are in at a glance. Steps include “Power on,” “Outage reported,” “Crew assigned,” “Crew en route,” “Crew on site,” and “Power restored.”
- Works in near-real-time, pulling data from the backend systems every two minutes.
- Provides outage information to customers from the time an outage is reported until their power is restored.
- Displays details about how many other people are affected by the same outage and how many people in the territory are experiencing outages.
- Provides dynamic restoration messaging based on how sure we are that a user’s power is back on and how long they were without power.
The effect of the Outage Tracker.
Through user testing, continuous feedback, and iteration, the team has improved user experience and made information like estimated time of restoration more prominent. The feedback we've gathered from users influences future improvements and feature rollouts.
The Outage Tracker also created the benefit of fewer calls to the utility about outages, with customers now having greater ability to self-serve. Customers can more easily access information without having to potentially wait on hold on the phone to speak with a representative.
“Previously, utilities trained their customers to call to report outages or get restoration updates,” Megan said. “Using the Outage Tracker and other tools is a bit of customer retraining to direct them to the best sources of information.”
Looking ahead, Exelon is bringing the Outage Tracker to the BGE mobile app and planning to expand the tracker beyond the Greater Baltimore market to other utilities like PECO in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Learn more about the BGE Outage Tracker.
This announcement was published independently of Exelon. This release does not constitute or imply an endorsement by Exelon of the product, process, or service, or its producer or provider. The views and opinions expressed in any referenced documents do not necessarily state or reflect those of Exelon.