After a storm knocked out service across two ZIP codes, we cut repeat calls 18% by texting plain-English updates within 15 minutes and adding a one-tap tech reschedule link; customers said it felt like we saw them. If you’ve tried similar, did it reduce churn or just move the calls to chat?
Same here — we cut repeat calls only after adding an ETR window plus ‘last updated’ time in the SMS, and a pause switch so customers can snooze updates. Caveat: tie the ‘one-tap tech reschedule’ to live crew capacity and only offer post-restoration slots so it doesn’t boomerang into more contacts. Are you tagging messages by outage stage (‘investigating,’ ‘repairing,’ ‘monitoring’) — that little status line works like a pizza tracker for outages.
We only saw repeat calls meaningfully drop once our SMS added a clear credit status line (e.g., “credit auto-applied by 6pm — no need to call”) and the IVR read the same outage ID message; small caveat: keep the time conservative so it doesn’t backfire. @rbrooks09 have you tried folding credit info into the updates, or does that make them too long?