The Challenge
A large Midwest utility had an issue with customers not receiving critical outage communications due to incorrect customer phone numbers. Customers with wrong numbers were not being notified when their power was out or when power was about to be shut off due to nonpayment. Customers not receiving a “disconnect for non-payment” message were 43% more likely to have their power disconnected, representing a poor customer experience, risks to customer health and safety and significant wasted truck roll costs due to disconnect for non-payment messages being sent to wrong/outdated numbers.
The Neustar Solution
Neustar Identity Management allowed the utility to receive real-time proactive change notifications when customer contact information changed (e.g., new phone number). Additionally, Neustar was able to provide predictive insights on the best number to use and best time to call or text to reach the customer with critical messages.
The Outcome
By ensuring the outage communications were reaching the right customer at the right number, overall customer satisfaction scores rose 5%. Neustar was also able to identify $1.7M in wasted truck roll costs, owing to disconnect for non-payment messages previously being sent to wrong numbers.