Providing your customers with communication options is essential as we rely more on technology to stay connected. Making that communication simple is critical. Now, you can enhance that connectivity and communication by leveraging the new outage two-way texting feature.

Powered by the NISC enterprise, the new two-way texting feature utilizes the accessibility of SmartHub, along with the communication power of Messenger and NISC’s Outage Management System (OMS), to provide an easy, convenient way for your members and customers to report and receive updates on an outage.

“Efficient communication is always essential, but has become critical during these uncertain times,” said Amber Wesche, NISC product manager for SmartHub. “The ability to report an outage and receive updates via text is going to give our Members more flexibility and more options to reach their members and customers efficiently and effectively.”

Through two-way texting, your members and customers will have the ability to text a key word to you in order to report an outage or receive a status update regarding a current issue. Customers can text OUT to a designated text number to report an outage or STATUS to check the status of their service during an outage, and will receive an automatically generated message to keep them updated.

“Two-way outage texting supports our strategic initiative to provide robust outage communication for our members,” said Keith Stapleton, chief communications officer at Sam Houston Electric Cooperative. “They’ve been asking for it, and we expect outage texting to increase member satisfaction.”

To take advantage of two-way texting, your member or customer must be a registered SmartHub user with a phone number listed as a Messenger contact. Also, NISC’s OMS system is a requirement for use.