Duquesne Light makes storm response changes after massive April outages
After deadly storms in April knocked out power to 300,000 Duquesne Light customers, the company on Monday released a list of changes it's making in response.
Vice President and Chief Customer Officer Kristy Stone wrote a letter previewing the company's after-action report. Stone said it comes after talking to customers, lawmakers and other leaders. It took about a week to fully restore service, and Stone said the company is working to improve its response to the next major storm.
"While we are proud of the work we accomplished in late April and early May, we understand that those efforts did not meet expectations for everyone, and that our work in recovering from this storm was really only the beginning," the letter said.
For starters, Duquesne Light said it has expanded the number of ports available in its automated phone system, allowing the company to service more customers at once. It's also piloting a chatbot function on its website, and field crews have been given additional capabilities to access internal systems, which should speed up the assessment and restoration process.
After the storm, some customers said they were frustrated by Duquesne Light's estimated restoration times. Stone said the company is focusing on establishing estimated restoration times more efficiently and communicating them more clearly.
Duquesne Light is also giving more training to trouble responders, damage assessors and field repair crews to restore service more quickly.
"We heard our customers, and Duquesne Light Company is already a stronger organization because of that feedback. Our relentless desire to do better is inspired by our commitment to serve the people of Western Pennsylvania with safe, resilient and affordable power now and into our bright shared future," Stone's letter read.
