Customer Management in a Hurricane – How Key Companies are Responding

When it comes to challenging the customer service capabilities of American businesses, few events rival the impact of natural disasters.

Whether due to the fear and anxiety created by the event, the effect of disaster conditions on corporate infrastructures and staff mobility or the adverse impact of extreme weather on services provided to customers, natural disasters remove the smoke, mirrors and hype from a customer service operation. If a company is not fully equipped to deliver an elite customer experience, the disaster will expose that weakness.

By endangering the New York City area, America's largest metropolis, Hurricane Irene exacerbated these already-significant customer management consequences of a natural disaster.

And while businesses from many organizations felt and are continuing to feel the customer service crunch of the storm, few have faced the onslaught being levied on utilities companies. These companies, after all, face the enormous challenge of having to retain customer confidence and loyalty despite widespread awareness that some of the services they provide—such as power—have been crippled in various eastern locations.

Customer complaints are never outright desired, but they can become exponentially worse when the best answer a company can literally provide is "we're working on it." In some locations, the conditions are simply not going to allow utilities companies to offer anything more satisfactory to their customers, placing on immense burden on the framing of their customer support.

Already angry at the loss of their services, customers have to believe the utilities companies to whom they pay thousands of dollars a year genuinely care, even though that "care" might not be able to manifest itself as tangible resolution.

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Far from an enviable situation for utilities companies, the situation does provide some opportunities to take customer service to the next level. Most major utilities players in the affected regions have announced increases in staff for restoration and customer support efforts, but a few have gone the extra mile in adding different dimensions to their CRM efforts.

National Grid, for instance, has bolstered up its customer response team, paying particular attention to the value of social media as a CRM tool. The Northeast utilities giant has been actively using Twitter to communicate with customers, providing a round-the-clock combination of updates on service and personalized responses to concerned customers.

Although its effort has not been limited to Twitter—the company has also upped its call center resources to handle customer contact and continues using its official website to deliver updates—the Twitter updates meet demands for frequency, sincerity and efficiency of communication.

Not especially taxing, the Twitter updates provide timely reassurance of National Grid's ongoing efforts and the reputational benefit of treating customers as valued individuals. The Tweets help National Grid show that it is not simply doing what it takes to manage the high volume of customer communication but instead what it takes to provide service of improved value for its audience.

Like National Grid, NJ utilities leader PSE&G is posting real-time updates and announcements on its Twitter page. It is not, however, Tweeting personalized-responses to its customers, limiting the sense of value and worth its customers get out of social media interactions.

Mid-Atlantic carrier Progress Energy has carved a niche in between that of PSE&G and National Grid. Its Tweets are not quite as personalized as those from National Grid, but its social media strategy does invoke a voice that provides something more "human" than PR speak.

It has also worked to provide region-specific stats, service updates and ETAs to cement the notion that its customers have not left the company's radar of concern.

Post-Irene customer service initiatives are not limited to "what can we do for our customers" strategies.

New Jersey American Water, for instance, is enlisting its customers to aid in getting back on track in the aftermath of the storm. It issued a press release Sunday, August 28, asking New Jersey customers to conserve water to help hasten its service recovery efforts.

"Irene's historic level of flooding is stressing utilities, including water systems, statewide," said Steve Tambini, vice president of operations. "Customers can help relieve some of that stress by reducing their water use as we work to provide reliable and quality water service."

Obviously, no Twitter, call center or publicity strategy is going to wholly compensate for the lack of service—at the end of the day, the biggest concern for customers is getting their utility services back. Providers absolutely need to view restoration as their biggest priority.

But how a company goes about communicating with customers in the wake of a natural disaster is of unequivocal importance. The tone behind call center messages and Tweets can mean the world for CRM, drawing a line in the sand between, "Chill, you're not the only one who lost power this weekend—it'll get fixed when it gets fixed" and "We know the loss of power is unacceptable and we're doing absolutely everything we can to assure your outage doesn't go one second longer than it needs to."

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