by Troy Fisher
Customer Service & Experience Design Lead
SSEN Distribution
Our customers.
We have four million of them, with lives and priorities as diverse as the huge, varied licence areas we’re proud to serve.
As electrification gathers pace, customers’ expectations of us are growing, as they demand more clean power for more of their needs. At the same time, a more-volatile climate is testing the networks we run in increasingly-extreme ways.
It’s against this backdrop that we’ve been making a concerted effort to deliver real improvements in the service we provide to people. One of our mantras here at Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks is that our customers are at the very heart of what we do, and my job is to ensure this not merely an aspiration, but a slogan that stands up to scrutiny.
As electrification gathers pace, customers’ expectations of us are growing, as they demand more clean power for more of their needs. At the same time, a more-volatile climate is testing the network we run in increasingly extreme ways.
I offer a contrite thought at this point when I say that our performance in the recent past has shown room for improvement, and publicly-available regulatory statistics confirm as much. We were struggling against these growing customer expectations, an increase in the number of complaints, and exasperation at some of our processes.
This trend couldn’t continue, so we set about fixing it.
In practice, the changes we’ve brought in have seen operational teams working extremely hard to hit performance targets, local teams being mobilised to fix problems in their areas, the customer service strategy team delivering a programme of strategic improvements, and our transformation teams delivering large changes across distribution – they’ve all played a massive role in this process.
The changes we’ve brought in have seen operational teams working extremely hard to hit performance targets, local teams being mobilised to fix problems in their areas, and the customer service strategy team delivering a programme of strategic improvements.
Let’s delve into what some of these changes have looked like in detail; several new technologies arrived over the past year which have had a transformative effect on how we deliver for our customers:
The use of Amazon Connect has provided increased capabilities for our customer service teams, speeding up their workflow and responses to queries.
We’ve updated our Self-Serve connections tool, which is able to give some people indicative quotes for network upgrades in mere minutes.
We’ve got a new system coming in that will automate some quoting activities and make it easier to build quotes for customers.
And we’ve made several improvements to the online customer portal, while new field-based systems are improving how we organise our work and mobilise our teams.
WATCH: Troy Fisher explains how new technology is driving improvements in the quality of service we offer customers.
All these things are helping us to move faster and do things in a better way for our customers. But it’s important to stress that we see the automation these new systems are bringing forth as a means of supporting - and not supplanting - our own teams.
We know our customers value human interaction, empathy, and problem solving. And good, clear communication remains top of the list in terms of what influences our customers’ sentiment. In this period of technical change, we’re redoubling our commitment to communicating with our customers, having their backs, and delivering on their needs.
We see the automation these new systems are bringing forth as a means of supporting - and not supplanting - our own teams.
Building on this progress, our Customer Service and Experience Design Team are looking at the areas where customers are still giving us challenging feedback and working on how to solve them. The transformation programme this process is inspiring will re-wire our business and deliver new technologies to set us up for the future.
Our ‘Broad Measure’ for Customer Satisfaction gives us a score of 9.05 out of 10 – our highest ever.
We’re in the early stages of this programme of changes, but the early signs are promising. The figures for the past financial year tell us that together, we’ve delivered our best year ever for customer service performance. What’s known as our ‘Broad Measure’ for Customer Satisfaction – which is an official Ofgem measure of how well we perform for our customers, based on a survey of people who’ve interacted with us in different areas – gives us a score of 9.05 out of 10 – our highest ever.
These results are not only important for our in-year performance, but also our reputation. We pledge to keep delivering improved performance to demonstrate to our regulator, shareholders and especially our customers, that we’re delivering valued services to the people and businesses in our communities.