Utilities and Energy: Customer Support Busy Season Survival Guide

Let’s face it: Busy season can be brutal. 

Busy season for customer support occurs at different points for every business and industry. While it can be an opportunity to make a positive, lasting impression on customers in certain industries, when it comes to energy and utilities, busy season typically means service outages. On the flip side, burnt-out employees, unhappy customers, and a damaged brand reputation can face organizations that don’t approach their periods of peak demand seriously. 

But in the utilities and energy sector, these peaks can be both predictable and unexpected. When these inflection points happen, so do customer support tickets. 

What’s in the guide

This guide breaks down what a busy season looks like for customer support staff in the utilities and energy industry.

It details how to prepare your existing support team and onboard new members if needed, as well as expert tips for preparing processes and your tech stack. We’ve also included our favorite templates for responding to customer questions and requests. 

Utilities and Energy busy season trends

An excellent customer support strategy in the energy and utilities sector is more than just keeping the lights on. Peak demand is rarely the result of an influx of customers; instead, it’s typically caused by outside factors like inclement weather or price hikes. 

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, peak demand for electricity in the United States is typically in July and August when the weather is hot, and demand for air conditioning and electric cooling is most needed.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) calculated reported [major] power outages between 2000 and 2021 and found that 83% of outages in the U.S. were attributed to weather-related events. These include winter weather (22%), tropical cyclones (15%), and other severe weather (58%).

Weather is always happening, and therefore, outages might be too. Here’s how customer support teams in the utilities sector can prepare for peak demand. 

Templates to respond to customers faster

Sometimes, getting started on templates and macros for customer responses is the hardest part. Whether you’re your team’s designated librarian or are just looking for some new inspiration, start here. 

We’ve created 20 templates specifically for utilities and energy customer support teams. Copy and paste them into your knowledge base, or add them directly to TextExpander and activate paragraphs of text in seconds. (We’ll let you decide how much time you want to save.)

• When the power’s out, you’re on call: 10 Power Outage Email Templates 
• Hotter weather means price increases: 5 Price Increase Email Templates
• For when you have internet (and they don’t): 5 Internet Outage Email Templates

A checklist for busy season in utilities

In your downtime before busy season begins:

Knowledge gathering and documentation

• Identify key customer pain points (i.e., billing issues, outage reports, energy-saving advice) by analyzing customer conversations and surveying top agents.
• Hold regular meetings with internal teams to identify gaps in best practices and training or documentation.
• Identify common responses or tasks that can be automated with macros and text expansion.
• Create documented workflows for the top 30 most common support scenarios and circulate them among all team members and make them accessible in your intranet, Slack, or email.
• Centralize your knowledge base by scheduling time and assigning someone to update the knowledge base and other documentation to reflect the most recent information and solutions.
  • Note: At TextExpander, we call this person your support team’s librarian. The librarian is the organization’s checkpoint for whether information and processes are accurate enough to be approved and used by the rest of the team.

Tech implementation

• Integrate a text expansion tool to streamline those common responses into macros or Snippets that can boost consistency across communication channels like chat, email, and SMS. 
• Develop SOPs that outline when and how to use your tools and text expansion macros and Snippets effectively.
• Test tool integration to ensure every tool you use works across all your tech stack communication systems (Slack, Intercom, Helpscout, Hubspot, Zendesk, email, etc.).
• Implement a chat system that provides real-time response time estimates.
• Perform system stress tests similar to peak volume to identify potential weaknesses.
• Simulate protocols for battling spam:
  • Implementing a CAPTCHA form
  • Turning on two-factor authentication
  • Blocklists for email domains
• Establish redundancy protocols such as backup communication systems during power outages or server downtime.

Develop escalation and emergency protocols

• Clearly define escalation paths for issues like service restoration during outages or compliance-related customer queries.
• Introduce a triage system for handling high-priority tickets, particularly during service disruptions.
• Establish a temporary escalation point (e.g. tier 1.5) for experienced agents who can handle slightly more complex issues.
• Closely monitor escalations of new agents during their first 5-10 days to point out unnecessary escalations.
• Study past emergencies to understand needs for 1:1 coverage and identify bottlenecks for information sharing.
• Set up a command center to manage real-time updates during crises, including coordination with field teams and regulatory bodies.
• Determine an emergency librarian who will update messages, Snippets, and documentation in the knowledge base during a crisis or urgent matter.

Staffing, training, and onboarding

• Scale your staffing so staff is 1.5-2X your normal coverage during peak demands or expected weather emergencies.
• Circulate staffing schedule 60 days before peak volume, accounting for in-house coverage, outsourced coverage, and time off.
• Retain on-call managers and supervisors for last-minute shift coverage.
• Provide outage-specific training for all agents to deliver calm, clear, and concise responses during crises. Schedule new agents to start with these trainings and schedule trainings to happen a week or less before expected peak volume.
• Record all training sessions so agents can revisit if they need clarification.
• New and temporary agents should be onboarded with a walkthrough of processes and Snippets in your knowledge base so consistent communication starts on Day 1. 

Quality assurance of customer communications

• Schedule bi-weekly review of 10 tickets as the busy season begins to ensure consistency and quality across channels.
• Check quality assurance across five areas:
  • Grammar and punctuation
  • Accuracy of information
  • Correct understanding of the support request
  • Proper use of the tech stack and Snippets
  • Adherence to standard operating procedure
• Review usage of templated messages and Snippets for new peak-season issues, including estimated restoration times or payment processing delays.
• Monitor pre-recorded greetings and responses to ensure information about expected delays or outages sets clear expectations regarding response times.
• Survey customers during outages to identify areas for improvement and adjust protocols accordingly.

Curious about who we are? TextExpander is productivity software that works across every app and platform on your computer, letting you type a short abbreviation that expands into a longer text Snippet. You can set it up so you can type “myname” and it expands into your full name, or so you can type entire emails with only a few keystrokes.

Learn more about how TextExpander is helping customer support teams end repetitive typing for good here.