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College Station Utilities, which serves College Station community members, has seen higher customer satisfaction since implementing text messaging.
Customers benefit from the utility’s communication about outages, both planned and unplanned, through TextPower, an ARCOS company that provides mission-critical communications via text.
“Higher customer satisfaction builds trust and strengthens our relationship with the community we serve,” said Jessica Pruitt, Electric System Data Analyst at the utility. “When customers feel informed, supported, and confident in our service, they're more likely to stay engaged, comply with programs that improve grid reliability, and work with us during emergencies.”
“With fast communication, customers are also more likely to feel comforted during outages,” said Dee Glander, implementation manager, TextPower.
Seasonal customers come and go, rest assured, communications will continue
Customers benefit from rapid communication. Seasonal customers, such as students, need a reliable system in place that ensures they’ll receive the utility’s text messages when they return.
TextPower makes it easy for off-campus Texas A&M University students to leave the platform at the end of the school year and begin receiving messages when they return in the fall. They do this through TextPower’s suspension feature.
“Most utility customers are permanent and perpetual,” explained Glander. “Students are seasonal customers.”
“College students are no different than military base or summer residents,” she added.
“With TextPower, “College Station Utilities can suspend the members when they’re no longer utility customers, then reinstate them when they return,” Glander said.
Students can also add extra phone numbers to their accounts, allowing them to include their parents’ phone numbers. Parents who don’t reside in College Station will receive information regarding outages in the community.
Another advantage to messaging using TextPower is communicating with students who live in apartments that house multiple students.
“Some of the housing units are four bedrooms or more,” Pruitt said. With TextPower, each student within a unit can sign up to receive notifications for their residence.
Serving the fast-growing city
It’s important for College Station Utilities to meet the needs of the community’s 130,000 citizens. The utility is located within a fast-growing city ranked among the nation’s top college towns. College Station is popular with sports fans interested in watching Texas A&M University’s sporting events. As a member of the Southeastern Conference, the university competes at a high level with other large universities.
Moreover, this popularity led College Station’s population of 130,000 to rise by more than 34% since 2010. Its popularity can also be attributed to its 2024 ranking as the nation's safest and most affordable place for families. Additionally, the Milken Institute rates College Station as one of the country's best-performing cities based on economic and quality-of-life ratings.
When Pruitt joined College Station Utilities, she began meeting the needs of this growing city by sharing what she had learned using TextPower at an electric cooperative.
“At the cooperative that I previously came from, we had already been utilizing the program and the software,” Pruitt said. “I took some of the practices that I was utilizing at the cooperative and tried to bring them here to College Station Utilities to ensure the best benefit from using TextPower.” Pruitt managed the launch of its use for CSU.
For College Station Utilities, ease of implementing TextPower is a plus
“Once I came on board, TextPower was easy to implement, and the customer service was great,” Pruitt said.
Part of Pruitt’s implementation process focused on best practices to ensure communication with the most current list of customers. For example, Pruitt uploads customer files weekly to update the utility’s customer database and also updates the database before major storm events. This ensures all existing customers receive important notifications.
Along with updating its customer database, College Station Utilities implemented the TextPower program in stages. They began by using the program to communicate effectively about planned outages. Then, the utility added an important tool: sending estimated outage restoration times during longer outages.
Sending estimated outage times is critical for customers who depend on electricity for oxygen or medical devices. Those devices only have a certain amount of backup.
“Those notifications become important in those affected areas so that customers know how long the outage will last and how they can prepare for the situation,” Pruitt said.
“Customers’ ability to power medical devices and refrigerators that store medicine during outages is not just a matter of convenience; it's often a matter of life and health,” Pruitt said.
For customers that rely on electrically powered medical equipment such as oxygen concentrators, ventilators, dialysis machines and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines. “An unexpected loss of power can create immediate health risks,” she said.
In addition, insulin and medicines derived from live organisms require refrigeration. A prolonged outage can spoil these medications, potentially leading to missed doses or costly replacements.
Because Texas temperatures can rise quickly, it’s important for people to be informed when they will not have power, so they can make arrangements to refrigerate their medication ahead of time.
With such information, customers have been able to relocate their medication during outages or temporarily relocate to a place that has electricity, Pruitt said. Though restoration times are estimates, customers are reassured that the utility will be providing updates.
Integrating TextPower with an outage management system
To send these timely and informative notifications, Pruitt needed to integrate TextPower into the utility’s Milsoft Outage Management System (OMS). The utility’s System Operators use Milsoft to manage power outages and assign crews to restore buildings without power.
College Station Utilities creates the content for the notifications with Milsoft’s OMS software and sends the messages via TextPower.
“Conditions under which messages are sent out by the OMS are defined by the customer in conjunction with their OMS provider,” Glander said.
Before College Station Utilities rolled out TextPower, customers were required to call the utility to report outages and then the utility had to call back to respond.
No more combing through customer voicemails
“Basically, instead of the customers calling in and leaving a voice recording that our system operators have to comb through, the members can just text ‘out,’” Pruitt said. If the utility knows that a device is out on its system, it will text the member saying it’s aware of an outage, she explained.
“Right now, College Station Utilities mostly uses TextPower for the electric side of its operations. Its water services unit, whose system operators take phone calls for water and septic issues, is just beginning to roll out TextPower,” Pruitt said. Texts to water customers about water conservation initiatives and boil-water notices are the priority right now. The water department has not yet needed to issue water conservation alerts.
When the water department issues a boil water notice, the utility uses TextPower to tell customers to visit the utility’s website and learn more about the time required to boil water. Pruitt has plans to begin texting customers hyperlinks to the College Station Utilities website, which offers information about boil water notices.
Like many water utilities, College Station Utilities does not use an OMS system that includes both customer location and contact information. However, TextPower’s web-based application AlertManager supports setting up and sending text messages manually.
Using AlertManager, the utility creates lists of mobile numbers organized by tags or groups. This enables water services to specify the appropriate group of mobile numbers for text communications. Automated texting for water services could be configured in the future with the TextPower API.
College Station Utilities creates communication lists for water customers. “Files can be uploaded manually that contain street addresses and phone numbers,” Pruitt said. Autofill messages are also configured for common texts related to water services.
Once the files with group tags are uploaded, water services can choose a pre-configured message regarding a boil water alert, for example, and tell the system to send it to a given group of phone numbers.
The advantages of TextPower for the City’s Water Services Department
Using TextPower for Water Services has freed up time for internal teams who otherwise would have to sift through voicemails about outages and return calls to customers.
“I have spent a lot of time working through unresolved calls and doing the callbacks to customers,” Pruitt said. “I know that in that area, TextPower has freed up a lot of time for our system operators and our utility customer service personnel.”
The utility’s service territory, which spans about 75 square miles, is very dense, making it easier to restore power when needed than other rural, less dense areas.
“We've got a pretty robust system, so we haven't had extensive outages,” she said. An outage lasting more than two hours is seen as an extended outage. Because the territory is so dense and small, the utility boasts a 40-minute response time for outage calls from customers, Pruitt said.
“Electricity customers have been satisfied with the text communications with TextPower,” she said.
"When our customers are satisfied, we're doing our job right — delivering reliable service, clear communication and support when it matters most. That trust doesn't just improve our reputation; it makes the whole system stronger,” Pruitt said.
For more information about TextPower, visit the company’s website.
