KPI Focus: AHT, FCR, CSAT, SLA
The Situation
A utilities provider needed better customer communication during outage and restoration periods. Contacts surged quickly, and teams struggled to keep updates timely and consistent.
What Wasn’t Working
- Customers called back because outage updates were delayed or unclear.
- High-impact cases were not always prioritized correctly.
- Leadership lacked clear visibility into update timeliness.
What We Changed
We built an outage-operations framework that teams could run in real time:
- Priority-based routing by restoration-impact tier.
- Standardized update templates and communication cadence.
- Intraday command rhythm for queue balancing and escalation decisions.
- Weekly post-incident reviews with corrective-action tracking.
What Happened
Communication quality and response discipline improved significantly.
- Outage-related repeat contacts dropped by 36%.
- High-priority response compliance improved to 95%.
- First-update timeliness improved by 41%.
The provider adopted this cadence for future seasonal and weather-risk periods.
A Real Moment From the Engagement
A supervisor observed that customers were often calling back not for new issues, but for missing updates. That became the anchor for outage communication redesign.
Before vs After (Operationally)
- Before: Update cadence varied too much by team and shift.
- After: Standard communication rhythm reduced uncertainty and repeat volume.
What Changed for the Team
Frontline teams had clearer scripts during high-pressure outage windows, reducing communication variance.
Constraints We Worked Within
- Limited time to redesign workflows without disrupting live service.
- Existing tools and reporting structures that could not be replaced immediately.
- Need to improve performance while maintaining day-to-day SLA commitments.
Tradeoffs We Made
- Prioritized highest-impact workflows first instead of trying to fix every queue at once.
- Chose repeatable process controls over one-off optimizations.
- Deferred lower-priority enhancements until baseline stability was proven.
If We Were Starting Again Today
We would still start with ownership clarity and a fast governance cadence, but we would add earlier frontline shadowing in the first two weeks to accelerate practical workflow adjustments.