Johannesburg, 12 Sep 2016
Utility outages are inevitable. How utilities communicate with the customers who are personally impacted by the outage has the potential to be a relatively positive or an incredibly negative experience. For utilities, mitigating the potential negative impact is an ever increasing priority. Your customers are more demanding, and expectations for a great customer experience are increasing. The customers you serve receive exceptional customer service from other goods and services companies, and now they also want it from their utilities. Since this relationship has gone on for many years, expectations may be higher yet.
We no longer live in the day where the biggest threat is a dissatisfied customer writing a letter of concern to the CEO. While that can still be damaging, it's a one-to-one communication and, as a single consumer, your voice can be small. Instead, one bad experience can spawn an excess of bad press in no-time as that single consumer hits social networks and creates a storm of bad press. When you add the critical need for "media damage control" to the barrage of restoration activities that occur during an outage, the situation can quickly become untenable.
In this age of social networking, a strategic, proactive social media plan and execution might not only help alleviate the negative bad press - it can also be used to help facilitate restoration, and improve the accuracy of the information you're receiving and providing. As the overall customer experience continues to grow in importance, improved communication with your customers, communities, local media and other stakeholders can be a competitive advantage.
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