The Public Service of New Hampshire used Twitter to keep customers informed during a treacherous winter storm

In the midst of a Dec. 11 ice storm unprecedented in its destruction, Martin Murray, senior corporate news representative for the Public Service of New Hampshire, reached beyond the typical telephone customer service lines, Web updates and press conferences.

In doing so, he found the most effective way to provide news to customers was to bypass the media and give it to them directly — 140 characters at a time.

The ice storm left more than 400,000 homes and businesses without power, about 322,000 of which were customers of Public Service of New Hampshire, the state's largest electric utility company. To inform customers what the utility was doing to address the outages, Murray turned to Twitter.

There he posted details — both from the office and the field — such as where outages occurred, what the utility was doing to address the situation and which outages would be addressed first.

Since Murray's corporate news office runs 24/7 during a crisis, Murray or his colleague Matt Chagnon provided a constant stream of tweets.

In nine days the utility’s Twitter following grew from about 100 to nearly 1,900, with followers ranging from NHPR, New Hampshire's public radio station to Web-savvy 20-somethings to a middle-aged couple in a rural part of the state.

"We were shocked that our followers were responding to us from their phones, from coffee shops, from their friends' houses where they went to recharge their batteries," says Murray. "They were eager for news."

Twitter in emergency

Twitter was only one aspect of the communications team's social media strategy. To document its restoration efforts, PSNH set up Flickr and YouTube accounts, which it linked to the Twitter account.

The utility also responded to the media through traditional means such as phone interviews, e-mail blasts and teleconferences.

Using social media enabled PSNH to proactively and directly provide information to customers, as well as emergency responders and the media.

"It's at the point where we almost don't need to use press releases," says Murray.

The value of that steady stream of information, as well as the dialogue that it sparks, cannot be measured, says Murray. "It keeps us engaged with our customers in a way that previously wasn't possible," he says.

But there are some tangible results. After the storm, Murray switched from using Twitter's standard tinyurl link format to bit.ly, which allows users to track the number of clicks they receive. Since doing so, Murray has been shocked at the traffic PSNH's links are generating.

For instance, when PSNH posted a link to its investigation of its response to the ice storm, more than 10,000 people followed the link.

"People are engaged with us in a whole new way," he says.

A basic strategy

Murray set up PSNH's Twitter account last spring. At first he wasn't sure what to use it for, so it mainly served as a power outage alert.

But after following British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Twitter feed, which features links to a Flickr account to show photos of his activities, Murray saw new possibilities for PSNH's Twitter account.

"Those tweets got the wheels turning and we began using the feed to provide information about PSNH-related issues like the energy efficiency services we provide or rate changes and we began providing links to provide additional information."

Brown's feed also helped Murray decide on a few of basic guidelines that drove PSNH's crisis and non-crisis tweets:

• Limit tweets to what would be considered by most people to be "important" or "useful."
• Avoid posting multiple times in a day unless in the midst of an emergency situation or the information is essential.
• Use links to show readers what you're talking about.

"We want to be careful about how we use it," he says. "We don't want people to tune us out."

Expansion plans

The utility has about 100 customer service operators in Manchester, N.H., along with another 150 or so at the ready in a Connecticut-based overflow facility.

Those representatives, Murray says, offer the opportunity for a one-on-one conversation in which customers can address their questions and concerns, and receive the best answers available.

"We found that with Twitter, our customers had the same experience — only in a shared community," he says.

Right now, only Murray and Chagnon tweet. And the corporate news office normally runs Twitter only during regular business hours, while the customer service office operates 24 hours a day.

Murray hopes that changes soon.

"This is a tool that can be used whenever anyone needs customer service," he says. "So if there's a power outage at 3 a.m., they should be able to turn to Twitter to get information. We should have as much interaction with our customers as possible."