Dominion Energy Outage App
The Energy Corporation’s First Customer-Facing App
Helping Customers Who Might Feel Powerless Without, Well, Power
Dominion Energy’s mobile app helps meet the wide range of emotions experienced during an outage. By giving customers timely information and tools such as push notifications on outage status and helping find restaurants, gas stations, or entertainment with power, Dominion Energy leverages mobile technology to make the best of a bad situation. They wanted to make sure their first app provided more than just account management, but utility, at a time when people realized just how important dominion is…during an outage.
Shockoe was challenged to create an app that meets customer needs during an outage event while also integrating with – and not drastically altering – several legacy systems. The solution brings an entirely new user experience, features, and functionality to Dominion Energy customers while seamlessly integrating with the company’s current web architecture.
Answering Questions Before They Are Asked
In a power outage, customers immediately go into a reactionary state. We worked to anticipate their needs and proactively respond to them in our UX:
Navigation:
- Skip the home screen. The Dominion Energy app showcases the map first and foremost allowing customers to understand the scope of the storm or outage event - Is it just my house? My neighborhood? Or my whole city?
- Let me flag my issue. An Outage Reporting button is front and center providing customers with a simple, clear way to notify Dominion Energy of issues they are personally experiencing.
Ease of Use:
- Are you aware things are bad at my place? Your Outage Status automatically appears on the first page once it has been reported. No longer will you need to dig around a website to verify your order is being processed.
- Let me report things without jumping through verification hoops. Previously, logging in to report an outage required the user’s phone number and the last 4 digits of their social security number. Spouses, roommates, and tenants of the account holder were unable to report their outages online unless they sent frantic texts asking for personal information. We re-designed the log-in process, allowing users to enter the more convenient phone and zip, and also remain logged in for easy and fast access to the app.
- Just text – don’t call me with updates. Push Notifications were greatly preferred to the traditional automated phone call. Customers don’t have to waste precious battery life to keep re-opening the app to check the status of their power restoration. If they subscribe to push notifications, they can trust that Dominion will keep them updated along the way.
Functionality:
- Everything else is just noise. Keeping the rest of the minor functionality within a minimal hamburger menu allows the user to stay focused on what they came to the app for.
The Four Key Questions We All Ask in an Outage
- Am I prepared?
- Do I need to call?
- Who else is impacted?
- Where can I go?
Nearby Places with Power
Nearby Places with Power was a breakthrough feature created and developed by Shockoe. It combines Google Places data with Dominion’s existing outage files to give customers more information about whether a certain business has power.
The algorithm accounts for inconsistencies in meter and business locations. By pairing Dominion Energy data with Google’s user-supplied business information, we were able to reliably find a match between the two sets of data.
Empowerment In Numbers
Within the first six months of deployment, 180,000 users had used the app with over 6,000 outages having been reported. The app represents Dominion Energy’s commitment to mobility for its customers. Future iterations of the app will include billpay and energy usage, and Dominion Energy is expanding the service territory from Virginia to its national footprint.
Resources
-Dominion Energy in the App Store
-Dominion Energy in the Google Play Store