What is fault triage?
Fault triage is the assessment a utility contact centre carries out when someone reports a problem with supply. Like triage in a hospital emergency department, its purpose is to sort calls by urgency so the most serious ones get help first.
On a fault line, triage answers four questions:
- Is there a safety risk? A fallen line, sparks, fire or a gas smell is a hazard call and goes to the top.
- Is someone vulnerable? A medically dependent consumer or another vulnerable customer may need faster action or a welfare check.
- Is this a known fault? If the outage management system already shows an outage, the call is linked to it rather than raising a new job.
- What response is needed? A crew, a faults technician, advice to call an electrician, or simply information.
Why triage matters
During a quiet shift, triage keeps jobs accurate. During a storm, it is what keeps people safe. In a call avalanche, thousands of no-power reports can bury the handful of calls about a live line on a footpath. Without consistent triage, those urgent calls wait in the same queue as everyone else, and crews may be sent to low-priority jobs while hazards go unattended.
Good triage also reduces wasted crew time. A fault at a single house might be inside the customer’s own wiring, which is the responsibility of the property owner’s electrician rather than the network. Asking the right questions, such as whether neighbours have power or whether the main switch has tripped, avoids unnecessary call-outs.
A typical priority framework
Every network defines its own levels, but most follow a similar shape:
- Emergency. Immediate danger to life or property: fallen or low lines, sparking equipment, fire, vehicle versus pole, people trapped. Advise the caller to keep well clear and ring 111 (NZ) or 000 (Australia) if anyone is in danger, then escalate to the control room straight away.
- Urgent. No immediate danger but a significant impact: a medically dependent customer without power, a damaged pole, partial power or flickering that may indicate a dangerous fault.
- Standard. Loss of supply with no safety concern, or a report matched to a known outage.
- Information. Questions about outages, restoration times or planned work, with no new fault to log.
Good practice
- Script the safety questions first using call scripting, and make them impossible to skip.
- Agree escalation rules with the control room so agents can act immediately on a hazard.
- Capture location precisely. Address, connection point and landmarks help crews and help the OMS group reports.
- Record what the caller saw and heard in their own words.
- Design AI handover carefully. Use an AI voice assistant for routine reports and a clear AI-to-human handover for anything urgent or uncertain.
- Review triage decisions through quality assurance, especially after major events.