KUBRA Keeps 120K Customers Informed During Hurricane Debby Outages

In early August, Hurricane Debby caused widespread flooding across the Southeastern United States. Throughout the storm, KUBRA worked closely with our partners who use our interactive outage map solution, Storm Center™, and our alerts and preference management solution, Notifi®. Together, we ensured their customers had all the outage information they needed. 

Below, we share some map statistics from this period emphasizing the importance of providing customers with reliable, up-to-date outage information during severe weather events. This data makes it clear that in these times, customers turn to you for reassurance in the form of detailed and accurate outage reporting. Leaving your customers in the dark, literally and figuratively, hurts customer satisfaction and causes undue stress in an already challenging time.

Number of Outages and Customers Affected

According to Storm Center data, 120,358 people in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas experienced extended power outages. We examined several utility partners’ outage maps to see how they fared and found that from August 7th to 11th, there were 1,148 outages. Most of these outages occurred on August 8th, and most customers felt the storm's impact on August 9th. 

Outage Map Users and Views

During this period, our utility partners had over 70,000 users visit their Storm Center maps, looking for information on outages affecting them. Of these, 50,829 new users had never viewed their utility’s Storm Center map. These users viewed their Storm Center outage map 298,030 times over the five days. This means that each user would have viewed their outage map at least four times, demonstrating the severity of the outage affecting them and the usefulness of the information available on the map. 

Outage Notification Enrollment Data

During this period, almost 21,806 customers enrolled to receive outage notifications using Notifi. Most customers opted to receive outage updates via text (80.90%) followed by email (17.88%) and voice channels (1.22%). 

It’s critical to educate your customers on the availability of your outage map and the information they can obtain there. Reaching out to customers during a storm is a sure-fire way to increase outage alert enrollment because customers are looking to you for information, and you’re showing them where they can find it. By encouraging them to enroll for outage alerts, you give them a simple and effective way to stay informed during a major storm like Hurricane Debby. Delivering a steady stream of outage updates to your customers when they need it most will help improve customer satisfaction and reduce pressure on your call center during severe weather events. Weather is beyond your control, but how you communicate outage information to your customers is not.

To get a quick overview of the stats, click the image below.