Handling Customer Calls About Outages – SaaS

🎯 Purpose

To provide clear steps for handling customer inquiries related to service outages. This ensures consistent communication, collaboration with Operations, and accurate estimated restoration times (ETAs) provided to members.

✅ Step‑by‑Step Process

1. Open the Ticket

Review the customer’s profile in Zendesk.
Verify payment status to rule out non‑payment as the cause.
Check recent tags or alerts — if the outage is system‑wide or already logged, the ticket may already be labeled “outage.”

2. Communicate With the Customer Immediately

Acknowledge their report and thank them for bringing it to us.
Do not promise a timeline until you confirm with Operations.
Example language:
“I can confirm it’s not an account issue. Let me check with our field team to see what’s going on in your area. I’ll provide you with an update shortly.”

3. Collaborate With Operations / Engineering

Open a Side Conversation directly in the ticket (choose Slack, Microsoft Teams, or email depending on setup).
Template message to Ops:
“Customer at [Address] reports a service outage. Can you confirm if their area is included in the current outage map? Do we have an estimated time of restoration?”
Keep Side Conversations internal — customers don’t see them.

4. Relay ETA Back to the Customer

Once Ops confirms, return to the ticket.
Document their response (e.g., “Crews are on site. Estimated restoration is 2 hours.”).
Call the customer (if high priority) or reply via their original communication channel.
Use the Outage Macro for consistent messaging, then personalize as needed.

5. Update and Close

Add notes to the internal section of the ticket documenting who you collaborated with and ETA provided.
Apply the Outage tag to support reporting.
Mark as Solved once the customer has acknowledged.

🔒 Agent Best Practices

Always verify billing/payment first before marking a report as outage‑related.
Never estimate repair time on your own — always confirm with Ops.
Use side conversations for visibility — this creates a record of collaboration.
If no ETA is available, reassure the customer crews are investigating and that updates will follow.
Safety incidents (downed lines, fire, etc.) should be escalated immediately as High Priority.