Improving the customer experience

 

IN MAY OF 2010, POWERFUL THUNDERSTORMS dumped more than 13 inches of rain on Nashville over a span of 48 hours. When the Cumberland River, which runs through downtown Nashville, crested at 12 feet above normal levels, flood waters ravaged the city and its surrounding suburbs.

Many residents in Tennessee were left without power, including 42,000 in Nashville, the service area covered by Nashville Electric Service (NES). Many customers were without power for up to two weeks as repair crews needed to wait for flood waters to recede before beginning the power restoration process.

Tweeting the outage
While the event was a major test for NES' infrastructure and its repair teams, it was also the first major test for the social media programs that Nashville Electric deployed in early 2009. Unable to reach the utility's emergency response phone line, customers flocked to its Twitter account, seeking information about the time frame for power restoration.

Following the paralyzing flood, NES relied heavily on Twitter and Facebook to relay important information to customers and to answer the 24/7 influx of questions about outages.

"That was our first big test and it was somewhat overwhelming," said Laurie Parker, Nashville Electric's communications coordinator and the architect behind the utility's social media outreach. "At that point it was just myself and our public relations team trying to respond. We were trying to respond to individual customer questions and this went on for a two-week period."

Customers tweet support
One surprise during the crisis was that customers used Twitter to rally behind the restoration efforts of the utility. When negative feedback was posted on Twitter about the utility being slow to respond, the comment was typically rebutted by positive Tweets from customers who understood the pressures that the utility faced in restoring power.

"We were surprised at how many people found us [on Twitter] and how people supported us through our social media efforts," said Parker. "We had a lot of positive feedback from customers saying to keep up the great work, which was a surprise."

NES first implemented a social media campaign in 2009 when it became aware of several "energy conservation myths" residing on online sites. In order to clear the air and set the record straight, NES turned to Twitter and Facebook.

"There was some misinformation out there about energy conservation, so we saw this as a great way to get out there and spread the right message," said Parker.

Social media as a constant communications tool
While the NES Twitter feed and Facebook page clearly see the most action during storms and power outages, the utility uses the social media outlet as a constant communications tool with customers, relaying content about energy conservation, billing information and other company news.

The utility has about 3,600 followers on Twitter, and just under 1,400 on its Facebook page. Parker said that the biggest challenge moving forward is to continue to engage customers through social media, especially during calm periods with no storms. NES hopes to accomplish that by pumping plenty of content through both social media channels.

"Our goal for 2012 is to establish a formal editorial calendar so that we can identify and target all of our key messages and make sure we cover what we need to," said Parker. "We'd like to be a little more strategic with that effort in 2012."

In addition, the utility will continue to promote dialogue with customers and expand its monitoring and reporting efforts and do a better job analyzing traffic numbers and how they correlate with customer service and customer satisfaction.

NES posts all kinds of energy conservation tips on Facebook, including a post in December about how much energy is consumed by 10 strands of Christmas lights left plugged in for 13 hours a day. Customers communicate back, with one recent post drawing attention to several blown out street lights. Another complained about a high electric bill. The latter post resulted in information being posted about how to obtain energy assistance.

Benchmarking social media progress
Parker said that the utility believes its social media campaigns are improving customer service levels, although it is difficult to measure.

"We've included some social media benchmarking in our annual survey that we do each year, but it's hard to prove that social media has driven up customer satisfaction by a certain percent," she said.

"We would like to think that we've definitely improved the customer experience for those customers using social media, especially during outage situations. Before, the only way for a customer to get information on an outage was to wait on our customer service call line, but often they can't even get through during storms because there are so many calls coming in. Through Twitter, customers can obtain information specific to their homes without calling in. From that standpoint, we feel like we've improved the customer experience."