Smart Meter Outage Journey at Northlake Power
Northlake Power serves 240,000 households across three regions. After a smart-meter rollout, the outage-reporting journey runs through an IVR, a mobile app, a contact centre and field crews. Each month about 18,000 customers report an outage or request a restoration update. Analytics show 42% of app users abandon at the identity-verification step; 27% of those who abandon then call the contact centre. The average time from report to first restoration update is 11 minutes, but vulnerable customers are promised a callback within 24 hours under a regulatory commitment. Nine legacy systems hold customer, meter and outage data; no single manager owns the end-to-end journey. Customer satisfaction has fallen 14 points in two quarters. Field crews report that 8% of tickets are duplicates. The COO wants the app fixed within 90 days and has asked you to lead a DSV review before approving the budget.
1. Is the main problem a defective app touchpoint or a failure of the end-to-end customer journey? Justify your diagnosis and state what evidence you would collect before choosing an intervention.
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Diagnosis: treat it as a journey failure with a visible touchpoint symptom. The 42% identity-verification abandonment is a front-stage defect, but 27% of abandoners calling the contact centre shows broken channel continuity, and 8% duplicate tickets point to backstage data and integration problems. The 11-minute update and 24-hour vulnerable-customer callback are end-to-end promises that no single channel owns. A fix that only tunes the app could raise completion while leaving channel switching, duplicate dispatch and regulatory risk intact.
Evidence to collect: a stage-by-stage journey map and service blueprint covering front-stage, backstage and support processes; drop-off and call reasons by customer segment; duplicate-ticket root causes; callback compliance; and interviews at moments of truth such as report, first update and restoration. Decide after that whether identity verification, status visibility or backstage matching is the dominant constraint. The app budget should be tied to the journey outcome, not the screen.
2. With a 90-day window and a non-negotiable regulatory callback, how would you prioritize improvements across the journey?
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Sequence by risk and volume: first protect the non-negotiable regulatory callback: validate vulnerable-customer flags, instrument 24-hour compliance and add an escalation path. Second, attack the highest-volume journey break: simplify identity verification and give a visible restoration status after submission. Third, reduce duplicate tickets through data matching between app, IVR and field systems.
90-day shape: weeks 1-2 baseline and quick wins; weeks 3-8 identity and status changes; weeks 9-12 measure and embed governance. Defer CRM replacement and avoid a big-bang portal rebuild. Use impact, effort, regulatory risk and journey-stage criticality as criteria. The COO should see that 'fix the app' is only one workstream; the callback and duplicate-ticket work protect compliance and field capacity while the front stage improves.
3. What journey-level KPIs and governance would you put in place so the COO does not optimize only the app?
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Use end-to-end KPIs, not app-only KPIs: time from report to first restoration update, vulnerable callback compliance, channel switch rate after app abandon, duplicate ticket rate, first-contact resolution and customer effort at report and update. Add segment views for vulnerable customers and regions. Governance: appoint a journey owner with authority across channels and field operations, run a monthly cross-functional journey review using the service blueprint, and give channel teams shared targets so the app team cannot improve completion by pushing failures to the call centre. Review the KPI set quarterly to prevent gaming, and close the loop with customers at the moments of truth.