Back in January, I spoke about the steps SSEN is taking to embrace social media as a primary customer service channel for our customers and to update you on the work we were doing on our website; making it easier for you to engage with us.
This month, we're bringing together Facebook Community groups by inviting administrators and contributors of local community groups to join a central group dedicated to their local area and managed by our teams. We'll use this central group to provide updates on power cuts in their area, the latest relevant news and storm warnings in the winter months.
By doing this, we can empower local community groups and arm them with the information they need to then cascade through their local Facebook group on our behalf. We want to be more proactive with our customers and tell you about power cuts in your area rather than waiting for you to ask us. Creating our online community groups is one way we're aiming to do this.
Our social media channels are growing monthly, with more and more customers taking to digital channels to contact us about power cuts and general enquiries. In the past year, we've dealt with 61,520 messages, tweets and posts on social media - a 64% increase on the previous year.
Taking Facebook as an example: we've engaged with customers 232,430 times and our posts have been seen over 4.5 million times - a staggering statistic for our growing social media team. On Facebook Messenger alone, we've had 15 times the number of messages from our customers taking to social media to contact us.
We are truly committed to putting our customers at the heart of everything we do, and by this, I mean always looking to improve the service we provide. We want to make it easier for you to access the information you're looking for. This is why if you contact us on a digital channel, like Twitter or Facebook, we'll keep the conversation there. We recognise we live in an ever-increasing, digital world and not everyone wants to call us. We will always do our best to keep the conversation by the method you feel most comfortable with.
If members of any of the local community groups have any questions, they can contact a member of our team who will be happy to respond - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This two-way communication is vital to help us constantly improve the service we provide. We're part of the communities we power and we're truly committed to giving our customers a say in how we do things.
We're excited to be the first organisation in the energy industry to bring together local online communities, and I'd encourage administrators or contributors who are part of any Facebook community groups in our regions in the north of Scotland or central southern England to get in touch with our teams. We'd be delighted to hear from you through Facebook Messenger, Twitter, or over the phone. We want you to be part of this, and we're excited to welcome you as part of the team.
To find the local community group for your area, please click here.