Our storm response

Ausgrid powered by customer feedback to prepare for future storms

We’re always making improvements on how we respond to major weather events to support our customers in times of need. 

In the past 12 months, our network has been hit with some of the worst  storms experienced in 30 years.  These storms impacted over 270,000 customers and we know that in these times, our website is crucial to provide information while our crews safely get the power back on.  In some cases, this means rebuilding the network from the ground up, street by street. 

We’re improving our communications to help customers during major weather events.

Our digital response

Our customer feedback drives improvements to  our website to better cater for major weather events. In the past six months alone, we have listened to our customers’ and improved the digital customer journey across multiple areas: 

• Website Capacity The Ausgrid website underwent an uplift in capacity to minimise the risk of disruption during times of increased visitors to the website.
• Digital app for Emergency Service Officers Ausgrid has launched a digital app for Field Operatives to update our outage management system in real time with repair and safety status information. This will provide more accurate and regular updates of restoration times to customers via our website outage map, storm news and social channels. 
• Virtual Storm Room and storm response website A new digital storm dashboard allows incident responders across Ausgrid to access real time outage information, and share suburb updates with the website’s Storm Landing Page.
• New power outage map and forms We are on track to deliver a new website outage map and outage reporting service in Dec 2020. We listened to customers’ feedback with the new design set to address the pain points experienced during the storms.
• Life support customers We recognised the need to provide further online resources to assist life support customers to plan for loss of power, and clarify the life support registration process.  Life support content was refreshed, including a new life support action plan template, and translations to support the CALD community. In addition, we also have a dedicated line for Life Support Customers to reach our Contact Centre on. 
• Safety communications We remain storm ready and communicate updated safety and hazard messaging via our web,social and community channels in the lead up to and throughout storms.
• Continuous digital improvement Our online feedback pop-up form drives our first touch resolution metric and provides customer insight and service improvement opportunities to resolve service pain points.
• Managing life threatening hazards We put in place digital safeguards to ensure that life threatening emergencies did not arrive through our digital channels, and made additional improvements to make it easier to report hazards online.
• Online reporting processes We recognised during the storm that customers were frustrated by our claims and complaints process. We have reviewed and streamlined the digital experiences and continue to improve all online forms in response to customer feedback.

Continuous improvement program

Digital innovation is firmly embedded in Ausgrid’s future transformation vision. Our FY21 Customer Strategy includes new services to keep our customers better informed, including a power outage SMS service.

Upgrades to our website systems are enhancing our capabilities for digital responsiveness. 

We receive continuous feedback via our ‘Customer Feedback Survey’ to keep pace with our customers’ digital expectations as we strive to deliver a first time resolution service for every website visitor on each visit.

We know there is still more to be done and we will continue to improve our services based on the needs of our customers.