Customer Experience Metrics Soar Following PG&E’s End-To-End Outage Notification Process Redesign
By Allison Herdic, Senior Industry Analyst
After a customer experience study revealed to Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) several improvement opportunities within its outage communications processes, the utility commenced a multi-year journey to enhance notification reliability and accuracy. PG&E established a highly collaborative, hybrid, and matrixed Outage Journey Team to research customer pain points. To bolster its outage communications, the team launched SMARTComms, a centralized delivery platform crafted to expedite notification delivery time and facilitate consistent and transparent information across all customer-facing channels. The team also developed smartETOR, a machine-learning algorithm that creates automated estimated times of restoration.
Also on the blog: 2025 Outage Best Practices Awards Winners
With the redesign efforts, PG&E was able to improve notification delivery from 55% to 94%, and timeliness of notification delivery has improved by more than 25%.
This initiative earned PG&E Gold recognition in Chartwell’s 2025 Best Practices Awards for Outage Communications.
Read the full case study here and register for Chartwell’s PowerUp Conference to hear PG&E and other award winners share their programs and lessons learned.
To learn more about the Outage Communications Council, please contact Tim Herrick.
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