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Powering Your Utility’s Emergency Response with AI

Two utilities workers in orange coats survey damage from an earthquake.
When disaster strikes, utilities can use AI to mobilize mutual aid and effectively collaborate with response teams. [Image: Adobe Stock]

Discover how AI enables utilities to better serve customers during critical times.

No matter where you live, being prepared for some form of natural disaster is critical. Whether the skies are blue, gray, or black, utilities have a special role to play in this, as you must be ready to respond at a moment’s notice. 

Effective emergency preparedness and response isn’t just about having a plan — it’s about having the right tools to anticipate, react, and adapt in real-time. Developments in data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) can help make utilities AI for emergencies more efficient. For example, these technologies can predict the path of a hurricane with accuracy, enabling first responders and utility service providers to pre-emptively allocate resources and issue early warnings.

With today’s technologies, preparedness isn’t just reactive but proactive, ensuring that communities are better equipped to face whatever challenges come their way. 

In this blog, we’ll explore how utilities can use data and AI to enhance their emergency preparedness and mobilization of mutual aid to better serve their customers in times of disruption.

What you’ll learn

Challenges in emergency preparedness for utilities
Understanding the role of data and AI in emergency preparation and response
Utilities AI for emergencies: step-by-step disaster response collaboration
Support emergency response more effectively with Salesforce

Challenges in emergency preparedness for utilities

Effective emergency preparedness and response faces numerous challenges. One of the biggest obstacles is that storm response is typically a manual process for utilities. These events disrupt utility service providers as much as they disrupt the lives of impacted customers. Ensuring that processes are executed efficiently is key to the success of disaster response. 

Planning, managing, and mobilizing field service resources is another obstacle utilities face. Budget constraints and limited personnel can significantly hamper the ability of emergency management teams at utilities to respond adequately.

During a disaster, employing the support of mutual aid is critical. To deploy these outside resources well, you need to be able to effectively communicate and manage external teams who play key roles in your response.  

Ultimately, resiliency is the goal for utility service providers in response to storms. You need to focus on restoring power in times of crisis. But if you’re spending too much time trying to figure out systems and tools, that takes your focus off the task at hand. 

Understanding the role of data and AI in emergency preparation and response

One of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of emergency preparedness and response is utility data. Data enhances situational awareness, allowing emergency managers to make informed decisions and allocate resources more effectively. 

By using trustworthy real-time data, emergency teams can gain a clear and detailed understanding of the evolving situation. This is imperative whether it’s a natural disaster, a public health crisis, or a technological hazard. Improving awareness is crucial for prioritizing actions and ensuring that the most critical needs are addressed first.

With more critical infrastructure and extreme weather to manage, utilities need to stay close to customers as they ensure reliable service. Agents, dispatchers, and mobile employees need to share a complete view of customer profiles, cases, and assets to provide safe, timely, and holistic field service, especially in times of disaster and crisis.

A single platform that integrates your customer relationship management (CRM) data with work data can give utilities visibility and efficiency across your response efforts. By unifying the view onto one platform, your utility can more easily automate your storm response, from logistics to communications to resource management. 

You can also use AI in utilities to further enhance your operations, including AI agents that can understand and respond to customer inquiries without human intervention. They can handle instant customer care, which can speed up communications and support in emergencies. AI agents can help by either assisting with or directly handling the work to be done. This allows utilities to scale teams quickly, which can make all the difference in disaster response efforts. 

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Utilities AI for emergencies: step-by-step disaster response collaboration

Here’s an example of a disaster response in which the utility uses an emergency preparedness solution that automates processes and allows for better collaboration with vendors. 

The National Hurricane Center predicts a Category 3 storm is going to hit ‌the utility’s area of service. The response team springs into action.

First, the utility needs to engage with vendors for mutual aid. They need to know critical information fast. With a portal, utilities can actively track logistics throughout the response period, including the locations of teams, the amount of work assigned to each site, and the lodging and food costs for each worker. Other critical information is travel and arrival times for mutual aid support and the skillsets for each team member.

If the team were using outbound emails and phone calls to each vendor, and manually tracking vendor information on a spreadsheet, response times can be slow. However, this utility uses a vendor portal that enables vendors to self-register and log their information. This allows for more effective communication and collaboration. It also reduces the amount of time to put teams together and allows teams to mobilize faster.

Utilities can track logistics throughout the response period using an online portal, including the location of work teams, work assignments, and lodging and food costs. Having this type of information is invaluable in a fast-paced storm response.

The portal also gives the utility the ability to use a mobile app where vendors can enter their timesheets. Once the event is over, the utility and the vendor can review time sheets and expenses more efficiently. You can also process vendor payments faster. The app serves as a one-stop-shop for mutual aid time management.

In severe weather, AI agents can support response efforts by giving field service workers critical information, such as pre-work briefs, to better prepare them for onsite needs and actions. AI agents can also create post-work summaries to document work completed. They can also analyze incident management data to improve operations in the future.

See how Agentforce helps Good360 distribute donated goods to people in need when disaster strikes.

Support emergency response more effectively with Salesforce

In emergencies or disasters, mobilizing tens of thousands of people is no simple task. You need to gather information, certify its correctness, and then get reimbursed to pay vendors. In a digitized system, you can quickly mobilize teams and automatically gather information before, during, and after a storm. This means that you can plan and prepare massive amounts of people in days and weeks rather than months.

That’s why Salesforce enhanced the Field Service for Utilities solution. It now includes a mobile app for timesheet management and labor cost optimization to support utilities during disaster response. Salesforce Energy & Utilities Cloud also has vendor engagement and management capabilities so you can mobilize support teams fast. And, with Agentforce for Utilities, you can use AI agents with human representatives and technicians to provide exceptional support no matter what level of crisis your utility needs to address.

Watch the Agentforce for Utilities demo to see how you can enhance your utility operations. 

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