App can help with power cuts

Perth-based energy giant SSEN is encouraging residents to download its app.

A year on after launching its Power Track app, SSEN wants even more people to start using it on their mobile phones and tablets to log power cuts.

The app allows customers to alert the operator of a power cut rather than having to phone up its customer services team, meaning the fault can be sent straight to engineers, meaning restoring power supplies can be carried out quicker.

In addition, the app also allows residents to take pictures of any damage they can see to electricity infrastructure and send it straight to staff at SSEN - along with GPS signals. This again allows engineers to find out the exact location of a fault and what the problem might be, again speeding up time normally lost trying to locate a fault.

Lisa Doogan, head of customer services and stakeholder strategy at SSEN, said: “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.”

Since the app was launched by SSEN, which has its headquarters based at Inveralmond in Perth, almost 32,000 customers have downloaded the app, accessing it nearly 700,000 times.

Lisa continued:“In the past 12 months, by using the app, over 4000 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.”

The Power Track app can be downloaded on the App Store, Google Play Store and Windows Phone Store.