Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks’ (SSEN’s) Power Track app has been downloaded by almost 32,000 customers, a year on from its launch.
The app has been accessed by users nearly 700,000 times, enabling them to alert the electricity distribution network operator (DNO) to a power cut through their mobile devices instead of calling the customer services team.
SSEN said the app has reduced the time it takes to respond to outages as reports are sent directly to its team which then deploys engineers to deal with the fault.
Lisa Doogan, head of customer service and stakeholder strategy at SSEN, said: “We developed the Power Track app to suit our customers’ needs after listening carefully to their requirements and how we could make interaction easier for them.
“Our key aim is improving the resilience of our networks and doing all we can to minimise the risk of disruption to our customers’ supplies.
“We know though that, in the unlikely event of power cuts, our customers want to be kept informed, so we want to make sure we provide them with all they need to keep in touch and report directly to our teams, in whichever way they feel most comfortable; Power Track has enabled that two-way communication through a simple system that our customers find easy and quick to use.”
In addition to faster fault reporting, the app allows members of the public to take photos of any damage to electricity infrastructure and send them to SSEN’s teams.
The images, combined with GPS signals, alert engineers to the exact location and potential cause of any problems.
Doogan added: “In the past twelve months, by using the app, over 4,000 of our customers have been able to inform us of power cuts and on 88 separate occasions have reported damage to our network.
“It’s these interactions that show the development of the Power Track app has filled a potential gap in customer communications and we’d ask as many of our customers as possible to take advantage of the free download and access the Power Track app whenever they need.”