Utilities customer experience
Storm-day performance is the KPI.
Electric, water, and gas utilities must serve customers on the worst day of the year, not the average. We design AI programs that hold up through outages, meet NERC CIP boundaries, and answer PUC reliability metrics.
Utilities-specific challenges
The pain points we hear most from utilities leaders — and the regulatory context that shapes every decision.
Storm-event surge
Call volume can spike 50x during major outages — legacy IVRs and staffed queues collapse.
Outage status accuracy
Customers demand real-time restoration ETAs; wrong answers erode trust and drive PUC complaints.
Critical-infrastructure boundaries
AI touching OT systems, SCADA data, or grid telemetry falls under NERC CIP scope.
Life-safety escalations
Gas leaks and downed lines must reach dispatch in seconds, not minutes.
Regulated billing complexity
Rate cases, disconnect protections, and assistance programs require nuanced handling.
Aging workforce
Institutional knowledge is retiring — agent-assist and knowledge automation are workforce continuity, not just efficiency.
Solutions tailored to utilities
KPI-first, vendor-neutral, and built to survive audit — not just the pilot.
Storm-day KPI baseline
Peak concurrent calls, ETA accuracy, life-safety time-to-dispatch — measured before tooling.
OMS-integrated virtual agent
Real-time outage status, restoration ETA, and callback registration with fallback to human dispatch.
CIP-aligned architecture
Clear separation between customer-facing AI and OT/grid systems, with documented boundaries.
Elastic surge capacity
Voice + digital channels that scale to storm-day load without pre-provisioning peak headcount.
Investor-owned electric utility — 2.1M meters
An IOU faced a PUC investigation after a major storm overwhelmed its contact center with 4-hour wait times and inconsistent restoration ETAs. We designed an OMS-integrated voice AI, stress-tested for 50x surge, and hardened the escalation path for downed-line reports.
“The PUC hearing became a non-event. More importantly, our line workers stopped getting yelled at because customers finally had accurate ETAs.”
— Director Customer Operations, IOU Electric Utility
Composite example based on typical engagements. Details anonymized.
Ready to design for utilities KPIs?
A 45-minute session with a senior advisor. No sales pitch — just your metrics, your constraints, and where AI actually fits.