As a strategic initiative under the Performance Excellence pillar, a recent project has improved the usability of Citizens Energy Group’s water outage map.
Enhancements include the addition of an outage self-reporting form on Citizens’ external website. Prior to this project, which was completed in late December 2021, customers primarily called Citizens to report a water outage.
The new form asks customers to confirm that they are not reporting a gas leak, which is considered an emergency that should be reported immediately by phone to Dispatch or 911, or a gas outage. Customers also are asked to check the online outage map to see if the outage in their area has already been reported prior to submitting.
When a customer completes the form, they receive a confirmation email and Citizens’ Dispatch office receives notification from the website. A dispatcher then follows a process to verify the validity of the information, and if there are no known reasons for the outage, they send a technician to investigate.
The project added a polygon tool to the back end of the outage map, allowing Dispatch employees to select an entire area affected by a water outage. Prior to completion of this project, the online map only provided location pins for water outages and did not show the boundaries of areas experiencing outages.
Customers use the form on a near-daily basis, and map updates appear to reduce the number of phone calls. For example, during a recent large water outage in the Avon area, there were 2,800 views of the outage map compared to about 1,900 phone calls.
In addition, the Water Wizard tool on the external website was updated to include an outage category. The Water Wizard helps customers diagnose commonly perceived water quality concerns. With the addition of the outage category, if customers are unable to resolve a loss of water by following a list of recommended actions, they are directed from the Water Wizard page to the outage reporting form.
“The efficiencies resulting from this enhancement are benefitting our customers,” said Gary Young, Manager of Distribution Dispatch. “Having the ability to troubleshoot their issue and/or report their water pressure concern online offers customers another avenue to convey what they are experiencing and avoid being delayed by any potential wait times on the phone.”
