Utility Week

22 | 12TH - 18TH APRIL 2019 | UTILITY WEEK Customers Utility Week Awards winner case study U K Power Networks (UKPN) serves more than eight million households and businesses across the South East. This equates to around 18 million people, millions of whom are aged 65 or above, disa- bled, or both. The company says it under- stands that the communities it serves have diverse needs and so it set out to work with partners who represent these communi- ties. Its aim was to achieve its ambition of providing a "world- class, inclusive service for all". Customer benefits With inclusiveness in mind, UKPN embarked on a range of initiatives to enable it to com- municate better with potentially disadvantaged customers, and its efforts were recognised at last year's Utility Week Awards with the Customer Care Award. One of its major projects was UKPN reaches out to all its customers A range of initiatives to better serve the needs of potentially disadvantaged customers won plaudits for UKPN, as well as the Customer Care Award at last year's Utility Week Awards. Winner's comments "Families and communities are increasingly becoming fragmented and diverse so we strive to provide a tailored service for all our customers, whatever their needs. "There is no 'one-size-fits-all' in our book. We take particular care to empower our teams to make the right decisions for customers based on their situations, and genuinely look for opportunities to create a service strategy that works for all. "This award recognises our industry-leading approach to providing inclusive services to a diverse community, and it was a real high point in our journey of improving the overall experience for our customers in vulnerable circumstances." KERRY POTTER, CONSUMER VULNERABILITY MANAGER "It was only when the DNO consistently reached 9 out of 10 that it went live with the redesigned website." to redesign and relaunch its website to make it more inclu- sive. It embarked on this project with two key principles in mind: ensuring the new website was "inclusive by design"; and co- designing the website in partner- ship with the network operator's customers. Working with digital acces- sibility charity AbilityNet, UKPN says it tested the design and accessibility of the website extensively. Its first iteration was rated 6 out of 10 by a sample group of more than 500 customers, then 7.5, but it was only when the DNO consistently reached 9 out of 10 that it went live with the redesign. The company also embarked on initiatives to better under- stand the needs of deaf and visu- ally impaired customers. UKPN attended events such as Deaf 50+, a programme for deaf people aged over 50, where it engaged with more than 400 people to understand how older deaf people, many of whom do not use online services and text messages, like to communicate. Video relay services were introduced to enable British Sign Language (BSL) speakers to com- municate in their first language. Information was also made available in BSL on its website. In addition to this, more than 270 customer service employ-

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