Westfield Gas & Electric Implements Everbridge for Severe Weather Events and Power Outages

Glendale, Calif. – Oct. 28, 2013 – Westfield Gas & Electric, located in Westfield, Massachusetts and serving approximately 19,000 electric customers and 9,000 gas customers, has announced that it is using Everbridge, the leading provider of critical communication solutions, to contact employees, as well as customers surrounding residents, during severe weather events or power outages.

Westfield often has to deal with severe weather events. Being a utilities company, the company has a responsibility to the community to have an effective communication system in place to inform customers, area residents, and employees on the status of an incident. Specifically in October of 2011 during an ice storm, Westfield did not have an emergency communications system. Power outages and failure of distribution lines were frequently occurring, and because of the lack of a mass notification system, customers were calling in to report outages, flooding the phone system. This proved to Westfield that a new system was necessary.

Previous to implementing the Everbridge system, all of Westfield Gas & Electric’s communications came through its call center. Customers would contact the call center with issues, and Westfield Gas & Electric would then send out crews to investigate the problem and determine if it was their responsibility. This was very time-consuming and often a waste of time.

With the Everbridge system, Westfield now offers mobile apps that provide staff in the field with the ability to share photos with system administrators. Being able to see pictures of real-time situations helps Westfield Gas & Electric employees to assess the situation and respond appropriately.

“I think that the features of the new system are really going to blow [customers’] minds and they are going to lead to a great experience. I can’t wait to roll these out and demonstrate how much of an evolution there has been from one system to the next,” said Aaron Bean, operations superintendent, Westfield Gas & Electric. “Being able to tailor messages to only identified areas on a map rather than just sending the message across the entire population, and being able to respond to situations appropriately based on customer communication is so helpful. It allows us a lot more flexibility and saves us a lot of time. The new system is fantastic.”

“The Everbridge system is designed to be versatile and useful for organizations that need to respond to situations, such as severe weather events, in real-time,” said Imad Mouline, chief technology officer, Everbridge. “The platform enables organizations to engage in two-way communications with customers or employees, giving them more insight into the situation at hand and helping them respond accordingly.”

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Case Study: Westfield Gas & Electric

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Everbridge provides critical communication solutions to more than 30 million end users in all major industries and government sectors around the globe. The Everbridge solutions suite allows clients to manage emergencies, mass notifications, incident communications, and situational intelligence from a single system. Ultimately, these solutions help clients save lives, manage critical activities and improve the efficiency of daily operations. For more information about Everbridge, please see www.everbridge.com.