Utility Week

28 | 14TH - 20TH DECEMBER 2018 | UTILITY WEEK Customers financial difficulty. According to a spokes- person: "SSE takes its responsibility towards its customers very seriously, especially for the vulnerable, and has a strong track record of going above and beyond to meet customers' needs." Earlier this year the company received accreditation from the British Standards Institute for its inclusive service provision. The spokesperson adds: "This means SSE has the systems in place to identify vulner- ability, no matter what form it takes, and the flexibility to adapt its service to suit a cus- tomer's individual needs." It is this holistic and tailored approach that is championed by charities like the Money Advice Trust. Its A Decade in Debt report, published in September, looked at how the nation's debt landscape has changed over the past ten years. "Debt problems in the UK are not only changing, but growing," comments Joanna Elson, chief executive at Money Advice Trust. "The number of people contacting advice agencies such as National Debtline is increasing significantly – with 2018 expected to see the highest number of calls to National Debtline since 2013. "Given these trends, it has never been more important to understand the complexi- ties of the debt problems people are facing – and develop responses in policy and practice to address them." The charity's recommendations for sig- nificantly reducing the UK's energy arrears includes a call to action for suppliers to implement a multi-channel approach and work more closely with the debt advice sec- tor to really help customers tackle debt. While many suppliers have taken encour- aging steps towards reducing energy debt and protecting vulnerable customers, there is clearly more work to be done. Delivering more diverse and tailored solutions to help address fuel poverty will require full buy-in from energy suppliers, government, regula- tors, the advice sector and customers them- selves. This will be fundamental to ensuring that in a year's time the industry is not reflecting on worsening numbers of exces- sive winter deaths attributed to cold homes. The wider context The Committee on Fuel Poverty insists that delivering the UK's fuel poverty strategy must be seen in a broader context than purely cold homes and high fuel bills. The committee is advising government to also consider the impact on: • Health. Cold homes negatively impact physical and mental health, costing the NHS and local councils. It also contributes towards excess winter deaths. • Carbon. Achieving the 2030 Band C target would be a cost-effective way of helping to cut emissions. • Jobs. Installing the necessary energy efficiency measures would create jobs across the country. continued from previous page Market view What Royal Mail can teach water companies Dean Wheeler suggests water firms would benefit from looking at how Royal Mail manages crises. A t first glance, Royal Mail doesn't have much in common with a water company. But scratch the surface, particularly at this time of year, and the similarities are bigger than you may have first imagined. Handling the logistics at Heathrow for Royal Mail gave me a front row seat at the busiest time of year for one of the UK's largest processing centres. Last year Royal Mail handled 130 mil- lion parcels in December, just over 4.5 million a day. Tricks I learned there I am now using in the water industry. As an integrated business, Royal Mail needs all its different process- ing functions to work in harmony for the system to work perfectly. Outside of Christmas, minor issues with this integration can be managed easily because there is spare capacity in the network, but as December progresses and demand picks up there is little or no spare capacity and any problems can be catastrophic. Even if each site is performing perfectly, the weather is always unpredictable. Unpredictable demand Neither Royal Mail nor the water industry can control the inputs to their systems. Loos keep getting flushed and customers keep ordering online regardless of the systems' capability. Blockages in both systems can drive huge disruption, which results in poor customer service, huge increases in costs, reputational damage and loss of business. For water companies this can also result in pollution inci- dents that may incur clean-up costs, customer complaints and fines. Royal Mail has created strong foun- dations within the business that focus on delivering great results every day, not simply in times of crisis. These are based on three main areas: • Strategy execution – understanding the key challenges facing the busi- ness and working to transform the business to meet these challenges; • Clarity of purpose – ensuring every- one knows their role and how it con- tributes to delivering great service; • Clear line of sight – putting the right measurement systems in place so it can "see" the performance of the business. Contingency plans have been carefully designed based on previous incidents. Royal Mail captures lessons from pre- vious problems and uses these to ensure the next one is managed as effectively as possible. Aer an event it looks at what worked well and areas that could have been improved. At Christmas the business is much more sensitive when problems occur, but the same routines remain in place. The teams have clear roles and respon- sibilities and know the larger and more complex problems are managed centrally, while small issues are man- aged locally. When there is an issue, the right team works on fixing it while the rest of the business continues to function as usual. Constant improvement Royal Mail began a programme of con- tinuous improvement in 2008. This investment in its posties and manag- ers gives it the tools to improve perfor- mance. Accidents and costs have been reduced, and quality has improved. Not only is this delivering a culture change across the company, it has improved resilience and reliability, from collec- tion to processing to delivery. The investment in continuous improvement over time increases the capacity and resilience of the whole system. Machines have fewer break- downs, processes have become more efficient and the number of quality issues has fallen. This all reduces pres- sure on the system when it's under the greatest strain. So when the bad weather causes flooding and the water system is overloaded this Christmas, it is worth thinking "what would Royal Mail do?". Dean Wheeler, consultant, Egremont Group

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