Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 29TH MARCH - 4TH APRIL 2019 | 15 Operations & Assets Operations & Assets homes due to be built across multiple developments over the next 15 years could increase Wantage and Grove's population by 75 per cent, greatly exceeding the capacity of the main sewer which runs straight through the town centre. Thames Water's solution to the problem involved working closely with Persimmon Homes, currently building the area's biggest development of 2,500 properties, and constructing a new pumping station and sewer to divert wastewater flows to the north- west of the town. If you have an asset or project you would like to see featured in this slot, please send pictures and details to: paulnewton@fav-house.com Pipe up Spread a little happiness Utilities could, and should, empower frontline staff so they can listen to customers and offer them an empathetic service. E ighty per cent of customer decisions are driven by emotion. The trouble is, emotions are notoriously difficult to manage, control and even understand – even more so in adverse weather situations. You can't stop every frustration, but you can listen to what customers say. On its mission to provide excellent customer service, UK Power Networks implemented Upland Rant & Rave's customer experience technology to capture a greater quantity and quality of insight. The customer experience platform has not just given if the ability to capture real-time customer feedback, but also provides the company with a destination for its 300 agents to track customer satisfaction scores, call vol- umes, response rates and insight. As a result, managers have full visibility over customer sentiment. This means staff have a true reflection of customer feedback on a dashboard in front of them when they're taking calls. Workers can go into every call aware of customer concerns and ready to assist. Acting on insights During key moments, utilities need to make sure their frontline staff have the freedom to act with empathy and sensitivity. There's no point collecting data if you're not going to use it to solve a problem. UKPN's customers can be affected by weather-related power cuts. Knowing this, the organisation has worked hard to engage employees and empower staff. For example, when a power cut disrupted a dinner party recently, a UKPN employee was able to go the extra mile for their customer, not just by keeping them updated on the status of their problem, but by helping them to find a takeaway in the meantime. Although this was only a small gesture, the customer was delighted – which shows just how much these little extras can mean. Another employee went above and beyond by keep- ing the customer updated with the latest score when a power cut interrupted an important game of football they had been watching. Despite their initial anger, the customer was so impressed, they called back specifically just to thank the frontline agent. This just goes to show how much customers appreciate good service – they'll even go out of their way to call it out, and this could be the difference between logging a complaint or not. When an unexpected situation damages customer emotion, this isn't something a company can control, particularly if its weather-related – but businesses can control how they respond. Customer engagement technology company Rant & Rave

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