By the TSI CXBPO Team
Every storm hits a utility twice. First come the outage calls: restoration times, downed wires, medical equipment. Weeks later the bills arrive and the same customers call back about money, asking for payment arrangements, budget billing and assistance programs. A contact center that’s ready for winter plans capacity and scripts for both waves.
This fall has given utilities plenty of both.
The first wave: 2026 so far
The late-September nor’easter left more than 100,000 customers without power across six Northeast states at its peak (Al Jazeera, Sept 27, 2026).
In late August, a severe storm in San Antonio put more than 250,000 customers in the dark at peak and produced more than 1,000 downed-wire calls, according to the utility’s own restoration update (Sept 1, 2026).
On Sept 4, a fast storm in Northern Virginia left about 10,900 Arlington customers still without power the next morning (ARLnow, Sept 4, 2026). Arlington County called it a 25-year storm.
And Hurricane Nolo cut power to roughly 10,000 West Maui customers in late September, while a Public Safety Power Shutoff went into effect in Pukalani for wildfire risk (KHON2, Sept 2026).
Four events, four very different shapes. A nor’easter spreads out over days. A summer thunderstorm hits one metro in an hour. A hurricane brings wind and wildfire risk together. What they share is the moment right after the lights go out, when a few hundred thousand people reach for the phone.
What customers need in the first 12 hours
Outage calls come in a few kinds, and each needs a different answer.
Some calls are about safety, and they can’t wait: a wire down across a driveway, a transformer sparking, a smell of gas. Those need to reach the utility‘s emergency process in seconds, with the address confirmed and nothing lost in the hand-off.
Some callers depend on power for medical equipment. They may be on a medical certificate or a medical baseline program, and they need a person who can check their status and tell them what the utility can do for them.
Most callers want one thing: a restoration estimate they can plan around. Do I throw out the food? Do I book a hotel? Do I pick the kids up early?
Then there are the details that decide whether a customer trusts the answer: a callback when the estimate changes, and an agent who speaks their language.
The second wave: the bill
The weather that knocks lines down also runs meters up.
July 2026 was the hottest month on record in the contiguous U.S. (NOAA, via Daily Energy Insider). TVA set 12 fall and spring demand records in September, peaking at 33,270 MW on Sept 3 (Chattanooga Times Free Press, Sept 26, 2026). NEADA projected summer cooling bills up 10.5% this year (NEADA, June 2026).
Those usage spikes are now arriving as fall balances. The calls sound different from outage calls. A customer wants to know if budget billing will smooth the next few months. Another asks whether a deferred payment agreement is available and what it would cost each month. A third has heard about LIHEAP and doesn’t know where to start, or wants to know if a pledge from a local agency will hold off a disconnection notice.
Those calls run longer, and they carry more weight. A commission can ask how they were handled. A co-op member may raise one at the annual meeting.
Winter adds its own clock. Many cold-weather states bar disconnections from about Nov 15 to Mar 31. A moratorium pauses shutoffs, and arrears keep building until spring.
And help is thinner than it was. Federal LIHEAP funding fell from $6.1B in 2023 to about $4.045B in 2026 (NEADA, July 2026). That puts more of the explaining on the utility’s own agents.
What a surge-ready contact center looks like
Here’s what we’ve seen hold up across both waves.
Capacity flexes with the event. That means overflow agents trained on the utility’s scripts, ready to come online when a storm is forecast and step back when restoration is done.
Routine calls get automation. Automated status updates can answer the “when’s my power back” call, which frees agents for the calls that need judgment.
The calls that matter most get people. Downed wires, medical-baseline customers and hardship conversations go to a trained person every time. The TTEC Digital and CX Dive study of 150 CX and IT leaders, published Aug 17, 2026, found none had achieved cost reduction through AI, and two-thirds saw operational costs rise. Automation earns its place on routine volume. The sensitive calls still need a human.
Scripts are written to the tariff. Payment arrangement terms, medical certificate rules and moratorium dates differ by state and by commission. Scripts should match the utility’s own rules, and they should be reviewed before the season starts, when there’s time to fix them.
Both waves get one standard. The customer who called about a downed wire in September is the same one calling about the bill in November. The second call goes better when the agent has the same training, the same tone and the same respect.
Ten questions to ask before winter
We turned all of this into a short checklist for customer-care leaders: 10 questions to answer with your team before the first winter storm, covering capacity, safety escalation, vulnerable customers, hardship scripts and moratorium readiness.
Here’s how TSI’s CXBPO customer care programs handle these calls.
TSI CXBPO runs utility billing, arrears, payment-arrangement and storm-surge queues inside a parent licensed or registered in every state that requires it and authorized to collect in all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico. If you’d like to compare notes on your winter plan, talk to our team.