AI-Powered Outage Management: 6 Real-World Examples in 2025

When the lights go out, every second counts. Your team needs to spring into action—fast. Technicians and engineers race to fix the problem, but while they’re working behind the scenes, your customer support team is hit with a wave of calls, messages, and emails from frustrated consumers. 

Meanwhile, energy demand is climbing worldwide and is set to rise by nearly 25% by 2050. With more consumption comes greater strain on infrastructure—and a higher risk of outages, which are predicted to increase by 100 times in 2030.

The reality is simple: outages will happen. But how you respond makes all the difference. That’s where AI for utilities steps in—equipping your team with the speed, efficiency, and tools they need for outage management and keeping customers informed during emergencies.

In this article, you’ll discover:

• Why most U.S. water, gas, and power providers struggle to deliver unified support during outages
• How AI can transform and modernize outage management
• Practical tools worth exploring for your business

Let’s begin!

How fragmented systems and manual processes affect outage management

Rising energy demand isn’t the only reason outages are becoming more common. Weather-related disruptions have surged as well. Since 2000, 80% of major power outages in the U.S. have been caused by weather events, making them harder to predict and nearly impossible to prevent.

What you can control, however, is how you respond. In fact, 78% of consumers say they’d forgive a company’s mistake if they receive excellent customer service afterward. One way to ensure this is by using advanced technology like AI, not only in risk prevention and management but also in customer support.

However, many utility companies are struggling to modernize their businesses because:

• They operate across multiple states and need versatile systems
• The industry is heavily regulated and requires excellent security standards
• They need tools that can support thousands of customers nationwide

But the price is your customer experience and business reputation. Let’s explore some of the common challenges that arise during emergencies.

Lack of proactive updates to customers

If you’ve ever been in a situation where, all of a sudden, you’re left without electricity or water, you don’t want to sit and wait around—you need answers right away.

Without AI-enabled forecasting or automated communication systems, utilities rely on manual updates. Instead of receiving timely outage notifications, customers have to chase answers themselves. Not only does this decrease customer satisfaction, but it can also cause the spread of false information and panic.

Absence of self-service tools

81% of customers expect a company to offer self-service tools. Anything from website chatbots to automated email or voice communication to make information more accessible can level up your service experience. When an outage happens, customers don’t want to wait while the line connects to the right support agent. They’d much rather visit your website and get their questions answered on the spot.

Inconsistent communication across touchpoints

Without unified systems, outage alerts or service updates may vary between the call center, website, and field crews. This inconsistency makes the utility appear disorganized, increases customer confusion, and drives repeat contacts like, “I saw one update online, but your rep told me something else.”

AI-powered tools for utilities unify data across all channels to provide your customers and team with consistent information. So, say an outage happens and your front-line team updates that it’ll be fixed in 2 hours. AI can ensure this information reaches customers and other teams to avoid confusing people.

Longer wait times and overwhelmed call centers

When customers don’t have deflection options through AI chatbots or smart FAQs, simple inquiries like “Is there an outage in my area?” end up clogging phone lines. 

This results in:

• Longer wait times for urgent issues
• Stressed customer service agents handling redundant calls
• Frustrated customers left in the dark
• Lower overall satisfaction

90% of customers say that an immediate response (within 10 minutes) is very important to them. In emergencies, it should be even faster. Without automation, and with your team swamped with inquiries, it becomes more difficult to answer every call and provide quality service to everyone.

6 real-world cases of how AI strengthens outage management

The global outage management system market is set to double from USD 6.98 billion in 2025 to USD 13.95 billion by 2035.

This surge makes one thing clear: the future of outage response lies in modernization. To keep up with rising risks and consumer expectations, energy companies need smarter, faster solutions—and advanced AI systems are at the heart of that transformation. 

Let’s take a look at how AI-powered outage management systems can help handle emergencies.

1. Predictive insights

With AI-powered systems, you can identify high-risk areas or times when outages are more likely, so crews and resources can be pre-positioned. Machine learning models analyze weather patterns, equipment health, grid load, and historical outage data to help predict potential disruptions and emergencies. This way, you move from reactive crisis management to proactive service reliability.

One of the main use cases for predictive emergency management is weather monitoring. For example, using advanced machine learning models, one utility company in Texas reduced storm-induced outages by 72%.

2. Automated customer updates

Automated safety messaging during storms or emergencies reduces risk and builds trust. AI-driven chatbots, SMS automation, mobile apps, and voice assistants can provide real-time outage alerts, status, and ETAs for restoration.

In fact, 49% of consumers want more AI integration to resolve service issues more efficiently. AI-driven systems can scale instantly to reach thousands of customers with no additional agent burden.

Many companies have successfully implemented such technologies to benefit their customers. For example, SECO Energy, a Central Florida electric cooperative, was struggling to provide 24/7 service to its customers. Looking for a solution to automate customer service with human-like intelligent virtual agents, they turned to Capacity.

They integrated Capacity’s AI-powered intelligent virtual agents to:

• Gather customer data to identify the exact home, building, or area experiencing a power outage
• Automate customer verification and predict the intent of the customer’s call
• Update and change a customer’s account as requested, including stopping or transferring service

With their new AI frontline, SECO Energy reduced costs per call by 66%, and 32% of all calls are now successfully handled by the IVA.

3. Omnichannel consistency

Miscommunication and confusion occur when information is shared and updated manually. One person calls and learns that an outage will last until the end of the day, while another is told it will be resolved in the next hour.

AI for utilities can ensure unified information and timely power outage notifications without any manual work across:

• Website
• Apps
• IVR
• Social media
• Contact centers

This reduces customer confusion and prevents “channel-hopping.”

Consistent information without additional strain on support teams is one of the key goals for utilities. One of the biggest energy companies in Southern Europe, Iberdrola, is planning to invest €41 billion to accelerate the energy transition and service digitization. Part of the investment is allocated to their AI growth plan to improve business transparency and customer service, including omnichannel communication and better self-service options.

4. Call deflection and a right hand to your agents

AI-powered virtual agents can handle routine inquiries during outages, like:

• “When will my power be back?”
• “Is there an outage in my area?”
• “Should I unplug appliances or electronics?”

Virtual agents manage volume spikes, deflecting calls from overwhelmed phone lines. You don’t need to worry about response quality because modern tools provide conversational AI capabilities. For escalations, AI can assist human agents with contextual insights, suggested responses, and access to knowledge articles.

According to McKinsey, one major energy company cut billing-related call volume by about 20% and sped up customer authentication by up to a minute by bringing an AI voice assistant into its call workflow. These numbers are crucial during an emergency when every second counts.

5. Post-outage feedback loop

Outage management doesn’t end once the power is back on. Your customer support needs to reassure customers and handle the aftermath. AI for utilities can again lend a hand by analyzing sentiment and pain points, feeding insights back into operations, communication strategies, and predictive models. 

AI-powered systems can collect feedback from interactions, customer reviews, and general sentiment to give you a better idea of what works and what doesn’t.

For example, if many customers in a certain location report delayed updates, you can ensure that your support team is better prepared to deal with increased inquiries next time in that particular location.

6. Field operations optimization

AI helps route and dispatch crews more efficiently by analyzing real-time outage clusters and traffic patterns. It can also prioritize restoration efforts for critical infrastructure like hospitals and emergency services.

Outages can also happen in multiple locations at the same time. AI-powered systems help coordinate teams across those locations to ensure timely and efficient service.

Statistics show that 88% of field service companies that implement AI in their operations improve asset uptime, reduce service costs, and increase overall customer experience.

Why modern utilities are choosing Capacity

Having the right tools can help your business handle emergencies and daily tasks more effectively and feel more confident about your outage management. But how do you find the right tools? We already briefly mentioned Capacity’s AI utilities industry software. Let’s take a closer look at how this software works in practice.

Fast deployment

You always have to be prepared to handle an emergency and related customer concerns. However, many companies wait until they face an actual outage before considering digital tools.

We suggest not waiting and starting today. Depending on your business size, needs, and existing systems, Capacity can be deployed and ready to supercharge your customer support operations in a few weeks. The system continuously learns and improves to enhance customer experiences over time, so once you set it up, you can sit back and relax.

90% deflection across channels

Our AI agents help deflect 90% of routine and repetitive customer queries across:

• Chat
• Voice
• Email
• SMS
• Other channels

Our AI technology can authenticate customers and even handle more complex cases, from “When will the outage be fixed?” to “Can I check my last energy bill statement?”

Smart utility support cuts wait times and gives your human agents more breathing room to focus on the most complex cases instead of wasting precious time answering the same questions again and again.

Unified knowledge layer

Capacity unifies your business data across:

• Shared files
• Presentation decks
• Third-party integrations
• Internal chats
• FAQs
• Documentation

…to create your corporate search engine. One of our most popular solutions, Answer Engine®, lets your team interact with your business information just like they would with their favorite AI assistant. Instead of going through lengthy documentation, your team can just prompt the engine and receive direct answers from the automated knowledge base.

Imagine you need billing information for a particular client. Traditionally, you’d have to connect to your CRM system and try to find client details while they wait and grow more frustrated by the second. With Capacity, you can just ask Answer Engine® while on a chat or call with a customer, and it pulls relevant information right away.

The highest security standard for your peace of mind

Capacity keeps your business and customer data 100% safe—no compromises. We are fully compliant with HIPAA, CCPA, FERPA, GDPR, and SOC 2 Type II. This makes navigating the highly regulated utility industry easier, no matter where in the world you operate. That’s why energy giants like SECO Energy trust their data and customer service success with us.

Choose seamless outage management with AI

Every utility company should be aware of the increasing threats of emergencies and outages. It’s not only important to acknowledge the risks but also to prepare to handle them when they occur. That includes not only a prompt response by your technicians but also support from customer service teams.

Conversational AI software like Capacity helps utility companies manage outages without risking their reputation or damaging customer trust. We equip your team with an orchestrated AI strategy, whether it’s for an emergency or routine work. If increased revenue, better customer and agent experiences, clearer insights, and decreased costs sound appealing, don’t wait—try our solution for utility companies.

Sound interesting? Book a demo today!

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