Meet Our Team of the Month for October

Storm season is right around the corner, and with it comes potential for outages. While this may be a necessary evil in the beautiful – and heavily wooded – Pacific Northwest, one team at the PUD has spent years trying to make it as manageable as possible for our customers. Recently, the PUD’s Outage Communication Team added their newest improvement: a tool to provide updates and high-level restoration information during outages. The continuous hard work, and long list of customer experience improvements that resulted from it, has earned them the honor of October 2024 Team of the Month.

“The Outage Communication Team has worked so hard to improve our system from the ground up,” said Mark Flury, Senior Manager Transmission and Distribution Systems Operation and Engineering. “Their dedication to improving the outage map, outage alerts and messaging has made a huge difference for the PUD and our customers during storms. Every person in the group works hard and takes initiative to do their best and help the PUD continue to improve.”

Jeremy Babcock, Andrew Coughlin, Brian Foley, Pam Haldi and Nick Pysson may come from different departments, but they had a singular focus in mind: creating the best customer experience possible during one of the worst situations for our customers.

“Working on the outage team for the PUD has been incredibly rewarding,” Nick said. “It is allowing me to play a critical role in keeping our community informed and safe during power interruptions. This outage project has taught me the importance of clear and timely communication and the impact it can have on the community.”

The team has been going above and beyond for years. They have spent countless hours diving into customer feedback and using that to improve communications. The newest tool allows corporate communications to provide updates to the PUD’s entire service territory, regions or even specific incidents.

The outage map and subsequent outage alerts that this group has delivered to our customers in the past year have a direct impact on our customers’ overall satisfaction and our Journey to 800 (based on JD Power ratings). Reaching a score of 800 or more (out of a possible 1,000) would place us among the top utilities for customer satisfaction in the nation.

“We know from JD Power that outage communications are a critical part of our customers’ experience. Our Outage Communication Team, in partnership with Distribution & Engineering, has done a phenomenal job providing reliable information for our customers so that they can plan through and weather an outage.” said John Hoffman, Chief Customer Officer. “The work this group has put in is incredible.”

“This team has done a great job of involving everyone in the process, including the ECC and crews,” added Aaron Janisko, Senior Manager of Regional Design and Construction Services. “They’ve worked with other groups too, like Customer Service, Corp Com and Information Technology teams. The collaboration has led to all of these great improvements, which are so important because outage communication is the number one thing we can do to ensure customer satisfaction and help us on our Journey to 800.”

The Outage Communications Team collaborated with groups across the PUD, receiving feedback and information that was key in developing improvements. Their work has led to several improvements, including opt-in texting from the outage map, enhancements to the MySnoPUD Outage Center and the new broadcast messaging tool for Corp Com.

“My favorite part of the team is the energy around development of new things that will enhance the customer experience,” Pam said. “The only way we were successful is the support from Operations and PUD leadership.”

The group has also worked closely with Kassidy Warren, Contingent Worker, who has also been an invaluable member of the team since he arrived at the PUD.

“Kassidy has been instrumental in moving us forward,” Jeremy said. “He brought experience and perspective on how to get things done and what other utilities are doing.”

The team has worked well together under a common goal: create the best customer experience possible when it comes to outage communications.

“It’s a team of diverse views,” Brian said. “Discussions are often spirited, but that’s how to get to the best resolution.”

“One thing that I think really unites this team is that we all think this is critical work to get done,” Andrew said. “We all believe in the mission!”