Davao Light continues to innovate rapid response for unscheduled outage

The initiative was in-house developed  to improve the company's response time and is anchored on the principles of the Psychology of Waiting.

In a statement, Davao Light Assistant Vice President for Engineering Operations Orville C. Lazaro said this includes creating a one-man crew on a motorbike, who will be deployed first to counter traffic, enabling the responder to go to the location faster and explain to the customer what the problem is and how it will be addressed. 

Lazaro said as a result, this allows Davao Light to increase its chance to respond quickly and identify the concern within 30 minutes.

“Though it is not possible to eliminate waiting time when responding to concerns such as unscheduled power interruptions, we developed this strategy to give customers a better experience and minimize their waiting time,” he said. 

Aside from improving response time, the new approach is all about the customers' safety.

“Every time we receive a call for immediate action, we treat it as urgent because any electrical-related trouble may cause a house to burn or may mean someone’s life could be in danger," he said. 

Lazaro said the one-man crew will be there to assess the safety condition, initiate quick fixes as applicable, and recommend a course of action to immediately address the customer’s needs. The crew will also give advice to the customers to ensure their safety. 

It has been more than two years since the one-man crew initiative was implemented and in February 2021 the more detailed execution commenced.

Based on the data collected throughout the years, around 90 percent of the volume of calls are within 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

This led the Engineering Team of Davao Light to also leverage technology, adjust the schedule of some crews and move them to a strategic location, as well as reinforced their competencies to intensify the approach.

Lazaro said apart from providing quality service, Davao Light also values innovation; they will be applying more strategies in the coming years to make customer response time faster. 

"We will further strengthen this by reducing volumes of calls thru proactive maintenance initiatives, equipping our emergency crew responders with the right knowledge and training, and enhancing our applications and state-of-the-art tools and equipment, ” he said. 

Davao Light, an AboitizPower subsidiary, serves more than 458,000 customers in the cities of Davao and Panabo, and the municipalities of Carmen, Dujali and Sto. Tomas.

Photo: Davao Light