PowerAssist Supports Seven Ontario Utilities Through Severe September Storm

When severe weather hits, utilities must work quickly to restore power while keeping customers informed. On September 2, as severe thunderstorms swept across southern Ontario, PowerAssist was ready to help our utility clients do both.

Preparing Before the Storm

PowerAssist began monitoring forecasts well before the first outages were reported. With severe thunderstorms expected to move from northwest to southeast across southern Ontario, our team anticipated increased call volumes and widespread outages and proactively increased staffing.

That preparation meant additional resources were already in place when customers began losing power.

As the storm moved through the region, PowerAssist supported seven utilities to help keep more than two million customers informed while utility crews focused on restoration.

More than Customer Communications

Throughout the event, PowerAssist worked as an extension of our clients’ teams, providing support across voice and digital customer service channels, outage maps, social media, IVR and messaging.

But keeping customers informed was only part of the response.

Our team also supported restoration operations by receiving incoming trouble and outage reports, coordinating dispatch activity and maintaining communication between utility teams and crews in the field. That flow of information helped utilities maintain situational awareness as conditions and outages evolved throughout the storm.

By the end of the event, PowerAssist had managed:

• Close to 3,000 voice interactions
• Nearly 1,600 digital interactions
• More than 140 dispatch and utility update calls
• More than 4,300 customer interactions overall

Behind each of those numbers was a customer looking for information or a utility team working to get the lights back on.

Ready When it Matters

Storm response doesn’t begin when the first customer calls. It starts earlier—with monitoring, planning and having the right resources ready to respond.

For utilities, that preparation provides additional capacity when demand is at its highest. PowerAssist can scale alongside utility teams, helping manage the surge in customer communications while also supporting the information flow needed for restoration efforts.

And for customers, it means timely, consistent information when uncertainty is at its highest.

The September 2 storm put that model into action across seven utility service territories at the same time. While crews worked to restore power, PowerAssist helped keep customers informed and critical information moving.

Because when the storm hits, preparation makes all the difference. Learn more about how PowerAssist can support your utility through severe weather events.