Utility Week

24 | 19TH - 25TH JULY 2019 | UTILITY WEEK Operations & Assets Event W ith utilities under increasing pres- sure to innovate and leverage transformative technologies, the forum provided by Utility Week's Technology and Innovation Council, hosted in associa- tion with Wipro, is in hot demand. Here we review two recent council meetings and the insights they generated. Imagine: better switching For better or worse, the volume and effi- ciency of switching continue to dominate a heated debate about consumer engagement in the UK energy market. Energy UK's latest figures tell a good news story about switching on the rise – more than two million switches have taken place so far this year, a rise of almost 20 per cent on the same point in 2018, which was itself a record. But such figures continue to reflect the fre- netic switching activity of an engaged minor- ity of the domestic market. Furthermore, while the vast majority of requested switches are completed without mishap, suppliers will know all too well that the immensely convoluted industry processes behind a change of supplier can easily go wrong and result in some significant instances of con- sumer frustration, anger and upset. With switching under scrutiny from the regulator and government, and customer trust in suppliers at a low ebb, these cases are high impact and serve to compound the negative profile the energy retail sector as a whole has with the public. It was with this challenge in mind that a group of energy retail representatives, con- sumer advocates and regulators, met to take part in a mini-sprint event, hosted by Utility Week in association with global technology consultancy Wipro. The ambition behind the event was to bring industry knowledge together for a fast-paced ideation session, focused on sparking solutions to key switch- ing process and experience challenges. Ahead of the event, participants were asked to submit a list of their most keenly felt pain points when it came to completing change of supply requests to a high level of customer satisfaction. Submissions raised a number of common issues, especially around creating customer confidence in the value of their switch, pro- moting customer understanding about the likely impact on direct debits following a tariff change, and around key industry data issues like MPAN-address mismatches which can lead to customer experience fiascos – for instance the wrong customer's supply being switched. Perhaps the most dominant pain points however, and the challenge which event par- ticipants chose to tackle, were around settle- ment of the final bill. Multiple participants listed a range of customer experience prob- lems in this area, ranging from late final bills and uncertainty about credit/debit balances to shock-bill fear and the impact of unex- pected final bills on customers with very spe- cific budgeting constraints. Bundling together all these concerns with the final bill, Utility Week issued a challenge to the sprint group to imagine how a pro- cess might be created that could switch an account and resolve any outstanding pay- ment issues in a single transaction. The process Using a range of design sprint and ideation tools, two competing teams of event partici- pants worked to create a potential solution Innovators in action Members of Utility Week's Technology and Innovation Council have been busy. Jane Gray brings insights into outputs from two council meetings.

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