MANCHESTER, N.H. - November 13, 2009 - Chartwell Inc. has presented PSNH with the national "Best Practices Award for Outage Communications" in recognition of its communications efforts during the December 2008 ice storm.
Throughout the storm restoration, PSNH issued regular email updates several times a day, pioneered the use social media tools for outage communications, and pursued many other strategies to effectively communicate with state and local officials, PSNH customers, the media, PSNH employees, and other audiences. In early 2009, PSNH issued Record Outage - Record Recovery, a comprehensive report detailing the restoration effort.
"Public Service of New Hampshire's success with social media attracted national attention and established the utility as a leader within the industry," says Scott Johnson, Chartwell Senior Research Analyst. "More importantly, it encouraged other utilities to experiment with social media as a way to deliver information to customers. The fact that more than 100 utilities now use Twitter regularly speaks to PSNH's pioneering efforts."
Chartwell announced the award at its Outage Communications Summit in Phoenix.
Please visit Chartwell's website for the full press release.