Power Outage Journey Redesign

“When will I get power back?”

That’s the first question customers ask when their lights go out, and nowadays, they expect a timely update on precisely when they can expect power to be restored. Avangrid is a utility company that provides electricity to over 3 million customers across the northeast, and when storms hit, trees fall, or accidents happen, their crew springs into action. In addition to turning the lights back on, the team has reimagined what the customer-facing experience looks like from the moment the outage occurs, through every step of the restoration process.

Avangrid displays, step-by-step, how they innovated the process by speaking with customers to understand their thought processes and needs when an outage happens. The utility company brings the process to life with journey designs that keep the customer informed on the status of his/her outage and provides context such as the impact of the outage, cause, and estimated restoration time. Along with designs, there was a change management process that was rolled out behind the scenes to provide more accurate restoration updates to customers, since research revealed that customers are surprisingly more comfortable with it taking longer to restore power, so long as an estimated timeline is delivered that they can trust and plan around.