Outages
Enhancing communication to build customer trust during power outages
The Challenge
When a plan feels like a crisis
For a major utility provider like AusNet, planned outages are a non-negotiable part of maintaining a safe and reliable electricity grid. But for the 35,017 customers affected in a single year, the experience feels anything but planned.
From the customer's perspective, a planned outage is a significant disruption that creates anxiety and uncertainty. They feel left in the dark, literally and figuratively while receiving vague notifications, struggling to find real-time updates, and unsure of when their lives will return to normal.
Internally, the challenge lies in complexity. A web of disconnected teams, legacy systems, and manual processes makes it incredibly difficult to deliver the seamless, proactive communication that modern customers expect.
Our core challenge was clear: How can we transform the planned outage experience from a moment of high frustration into an opportunity to build customer trust?
My Role
As a Senior UX designer on this project, my role was to own the end-to-end experience strategy, from initial discovery through to the design and delivery of the final solution. I worked alongside a UX Designer who assisted during research and workshops.
This involved taking up the following roles:
Research: I planned and conducted the initial 8-week discovery phase, which included 13 in-depth customer interviews to map the frontstage customer journey.
Workshop Facilitation: I facilitated 3 workshops with 12 internal subject matter experts to deconstruct the complex backstage processes, identifying every team, technology, and internal pain point involved in executing a planned outage.
UX Strategy: I synthesised this research into a comprehensive Service Blueprint, which became the single source of truth for the entire project. From this, I distilled our findings into four actionable "UX Moments to Master" to guide our design efforts.
Product Design: I then translated this strategy into tangible solutions, designing the multi-channel communication touchpoints - including the live outage tracker on the website and the proactive SMS notification system and validating them with users through a series of design sprints.
The Approach
Uncovering the big picture
Over an 8-week period, we explored the planned outages customer experience across residential, life support, small and medium enterprises, and commercial and industrial customers.
In parallel, we engaged with AusNet Services employees from various parts of the business to understand their perspectives on the planned outage journey and identify opportunities for improvement from a subject matter expert (SME) standpoint.
To inform our understanding, we conducted in-depth research within the National Electricity Market. This included interviews and observations with customers across AusNet’s distribution area to uncover their needs, expectations, and frustrations related to planned outages.
In addition, we collaborated with 12 SMEs from AusNet Services through a series of workshops and one-on-one interviews to build a clearer picture of the internal processes, challenges, and opportunities across the end-to-end planned outage journey.
Findings
Deconstructing the Outage Journey
Our research revealed that the planned outage experience could be broken down into three distinct phases - before the outage, during the outage and after. By analyzing the frontstage (customer) and backstage (business) activities at each phase, we were able to pinpoint the exact moments where the experience broke down and trust was eroded.
Our research painted a clear picture of frustration and uncertainty. We learned that the impact of an outage goes far beyond the inconvenience of not having power for an average of 3.5 hours. For small businesses, it meant lost revenue. For residential customers, it meant anxiety and a disruption to daily life.
We repeatedly heard that the core issue was a communication breakdown. Customers felt powerless, with no visibility of the outage status and no way to plan ahead effectively.
"Four days is not enough notice as we have functions booked a month in advance. We've had to cancel a function we booked. A month to prepare would be ideal."
Ultimately, we found that customers were resilient and understood the need for maintenance, but they desperately needed clearer, more timely, and more transparent communication to feel respected and in control.
Strategy
The 'UX Moments To Master'
To focus our efforts and guide the design phase, we synthesised these findings into four strategic pillars, the 'UX Moments to Master.' These became our guiding principles for transforming the planned outage experience.
Conceptual Design
Setting The Design Direction
We approached the transition from research to design with a systems mindset. Knowing that a single touchpoint couldn’t solve the problem, we began shaping a holistic, multi-channel communication experience - one that could meet customers where they are, and when it matters most. Guided by our 'UX Moments To Master' pillars, the design started to take form.
1. Proactive Preparation
To effectively “Reach Out in the Right Way,” we moved beyond the default of formal letters by introducing a simple, intuitive Notification Registration Page. This gave customers control over how they receive outage updates, helping build trust and ensuring critical information reaches them on the channels they actually use.
To “Keep Customers in the Know,” we designed the Outage Website as a central information hub. It clearly presents key details like searching for outages and what to expect.
2. Before The Outage
The designs introduce clear, accessible ways for customers to get information upfront, such as a detailed outage tracker on the website. We also designed a proactive SMS reminder system, allowing customers to opt-in for timely updates.
3. During The Outage
This phase focused on addressing the “information blackout” by designing two key touchpoints: a live Outage Tracker on the website as the single source of truth for real-time updates, and push-based SMS alerts for critical changes like delays or early restorations. Together, they aimed to keep customers informed and reassured during the most uncertain moments.
4. After The Outage
The final phase was designed to provide closure and certainty. The concepts show a final "Supply Restored" SMS notification to confirm the work is complete. We also introduced a simple feedback mechanism via SMS, creating an opportunity to gather insights and show customers that their experience matters, turning a potentially negative event into a final, positive interaction.
User Testing
From Concepts To Confidence
To validate our core concepts, we conducted a series of moderated usability sessions over a four-week period. Using low-fidelity website and SMS prototypes, we tested with nine customers across key segments to gather feedback and assess how well the designs met their needs.
A Pivot
From 'Settings' To 'Subscription'
Our initial hypothesis was that to improve communication, we should give customers the most granular control possible. Our first design concept was a comprehensive settings page where users could manage their contact details, alert types, and even set their preferred time of year, week, and day for planned outages to occur. The core idea was: maximum control will create the best experience.
Initial Concept (Archived): An early design focused on giving users maximum scheduling control.
However, when we vetted this initial concept with internal stakeholders and engineers, we uncovered critical realities that prompted a major strategic pivot.
1. The Business Constraint: The 'scheduling preferences' feature, while desirable for users, was operationally impossible. Outage schedules are determined by complex factors like grid maintenance, crew availability, and public safety, not individual preferences. Promising this level of control would set a false expectation and ultimately damage customer trust.
2. The Hidden User Need: Through further research, we realized the primary user anxiety wasn't a lack of control over scheduling, but a lack of certainty and trust. Their key questions were, 'Are you sure you have the right property for me?' and 'What if I'm not the only one who needs to know?'.
3. The Critical Safety Gap: Our initial design treated all customers the same. We had not accounted for the vastly different and urgent needs of distinct customer segments, such as businesses or, most importantly, registered life support customers who depend on an uninterrupted power supply.
This realisation led us to discard the scheduling feature and instead focus our final designs on a guided, verification-first subscription process, which you'll see in the following section.
The 'After'
Feasibility & Focus
This new understanding forced us to redefine the problem. We moved from 'How can we give users more settings to manage?' to 'How can we create a trustworthy, secure, and inclusive subscription service?'.
This led to our final design, which was built on three key principles:
1. Verify First: We introduced a mandatory verification step using the property's NMI. This created a secure front door to the service, giving users confidence that they were subscribing for the correct address.
2. Segment and Serve: We replaced the unrealistic scheduling feature with a simple but critical question: 'Who are you?'. This allowed us to identify life support customers immediately and ensure they received the appropriate level of service, a crucial safety improvement.
3. Guide and Clarify: We redesigned the entire experience as a simple two-step flow. This guided the user, reduced complexity, and provided help through contextual tooltips and progressive disclosure for adding multiple contacts.
Detailed Design
Introducing The New Planned Outages Experience
With insights from usability testing in hand, we moved into final design and delivery. We refined our low-fidelity concepts into a clean, accessible, and easy-to-use solution. The following detailed designs reflect what we learned through research and iteration, addressing the key issues raised by customers along the way.
1. Redesigned Outage Tracker
2. Outage Subscription
3. Refined SMS Notifications
Impact
Anxiety To Confidence
The launch of the redesigned outage communication system made a real difference, for both customers and internal teams. By giving people clear, proactive updates, we helped ease customer anxiety and took pressure off our support staff. In just 3 months, over 20,000 customers signed up for SMS notifications, and within the first 6 months, calls to the contact centre about outage status dropped by 20%.
Residential customer, VIC
"The sms updates are good. Don't have to guess what's going on. I just get the texts and can plan my day then."
AusNet Agent
"Calls regarding outage status have actually dropped now. Most customers already know there’s an outage, so we can actually focus on helping with other queries now."
Cafe Manager, Bairnsdale
"We have a generator ready, but knowing when the power will be back helps us plan properly. We don't shut down, and we let customers know on our socials about what was going on."
Reflection
My biggest takeaway from this project was the profound impact of seeing a problem through a service design lens. By looking beyond the screens and mapping the entire human experience, from a small business owner rearranging their entire week to a life-support customer's heightened anxiety, we were able to anchor our work in empathy. It taught me that our solution wasn't just about delivering information - it was about delivering confidence and peace of mind. If I were to do it again, I would push to establish even more detailed qualitative metrics from the start, ensuring that we could not only measure the reduction in call volume but also the positive shift in customer sentiment, maybe quantifying our success in human terms.
