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Essential Energy - Streetlights

From Risk to Reliability: Digitalising Streetlight Fault Reporting for Essential Energy

Essential Energy - Streetlights

Deepend replaced Essential Energy’s difficult streetlight reporting tool with an integrated web portal that automates fault logging, work allocation and customer notifications.

Client: Essential Energy

Industry: Energy, Utilities, Government Infrastructure 

Services: Service design, UX/UI design, Web application development, Systems integration, Automation

Technologies: Sitecore CMS v8.2; Google Maps; MuleSoft APIs 

Year: 2024

“The Contact Centre team asked me to say thanks for delivering a good, stable environment – well done team! Happy users are the best kind of users!"

Annie Belisle - Essential Energy

The Challenge 

  • The previous NeatStreets tool was difficult to use and created legal, compliance and public liability risks. Customers could fail to report faults or submit inaccurate information. 
  • Manual re-entry also increased contact-centre effort and reduced data quality. 

The Opportunity

  • A new customer-focused portal could connect reporting directly to Essential Energy’s internal systems and fieldwork processes. 
  • Automation could improve accuracy, reduce manual intervention and give customers confidence that faults were being addressed. 

Our Approach

Deepend worked with Essential Energy through co-design workshops and agile delivery. 

The team designed more than 40 screens, used Google Maps to help customers identify streetlights and integrated the application with internal systems through MuleSoft APIs.

Deepend design team designed over 40 screens for Essential Energy
DESIGN IMPACT

Deepend's co-design process produced more than 40 precision-designed screens, ensuring seamless customer workflows and alignment with Essential Energy's downstream systems.
Co-design workshops with internal Essential energy team
Design process Convergent thinking ensures that clear solutions and outcomes move forward into the prototyping phases of the program.

What We Delivered

  • Co-design workshops 
  • Customer journey and workflow design 
  • More than 40 interface screens 
  • Google Maps streetlight selection 
  • Customer-facing web portal 
  • Secure staff view 
  • MuleSoft API integration 
  • Sitecore CMS integration 
  • Automated SMS and email notifications

Impact

  • Automated creation of fieldwork tasks from customer reports 
  • Reduced manual intervention in the contact centre 
  • Improved streetlight data capture and accuracy 
  • Customer notifications when faults were raised and repaired 
  • A consistent experience within Essential Energy’s existing Sitecore website 

Value and Impact

Enabling a safe and reliable network now and into the future

The solution effectively captures streetlight fault reports from customers and automatically raises fieldwork tasks to quickly assign repair crew, with all of the information they need to repair the fault.

Creating efficiencies and improving accuracies in the contact centre

Reduced calls for streetlight faults to the contact centre and improvements in the efficiency of contact centre raising streetlight faults. It reduces manual intervention by automating processes, improving data capture quality and streetlight data accuracy.

Leveraging automation to increase customer confidence

Customers receive an automated response by Essential Energy via SMS or email when the fault is raised and another confirming that the streetlight has been fixed. This gives confidence to customers that their concern has been heard and resolved.
Engaged stakeholder team

Engaged stakeholder team

A priority project within EE, Deepend worked using agile techniques to deliver the web portal that not only had the customer facing experience, but also a secure staff view.

Problem & Insight

The existing process introduced friction at the point where public safety issues were reported. Poor usability discouraged reporting and increased the likelihood of incorrect location and asset information. 

The design needed to satisfy customer expectations while meeting downstream data requirements for field teams. 

Strategy & Experience Design

Co-design workshops aligned the customer experience with Essential Energy’s internal workflows. Precision design covered the full range of customer and staff scenarios. 

Google Maps allowed users to select the relevant streetlight quickly and report the fault with better location accuracy. 

Technology & Delivery

The standalone application integrated with MuleSoft APIs to create work tasks, retrieve asset and location data and send customer notifications. 

It was designed to appear within Essential Energy’s Sitecore CMS v8.2 website while maintaining a secure staff view. 

Composable digital solution

Composable digital solution

The final solution was a standalone web application that integrated with MuleSoft API’s that passed data to EE internal systems but was able to be injected into their existing corporate website.

Results

The portal created a more stable and automated reporting environment. It improved data capture, reduced manual handling and made fault status more visible to customers. 

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