Con Edison Improves Preemptive Shutoff Communications

After a heatwave in the summer of 2019 set off emergency power shutoffs in Brooklyn, Con Edison received a massive wave of customer complaints. Con Edison’s Outage Communications Journey Mapping Team went straight to work to find ways of improving the experience of customers impacted by preemptive shutoffs, identifying solutions on both the customer and operational sides that became Con Edison’s EMI Planned Outages Project. The result was the launch of a comprehensive package of scripts and a well-designed procedure in the first months of 2020 to communicate with customers prior to, during, and after shutoffs. By the time similar outages took place in Brownsville and Queens in the summer of 2020, the effort paid off. In testing, virtually all customers, 96%, felt proactive messages sent to them were valuable and 90% of customers reported the messages provided enough time to prepare and made them feel at ease. 

In this session, learn how Con Edison carried out this successful project. 

---

Speakers:

—Estephany Conde – Project Specialist, Con Edison 

—Joseph Polito – Project Manager, Con Edison