Utility Week

28 | 25TH - 31ST OCTOBER 2019 | UTILITY WEEK Customers Analysis U K Power Networks is not only the big- gest distribution network operator (DNO) in the country, it also serves a wide diversity of communities. At the same time, with no direct billing relationship, 80 per cent of engagement with customers occurs only when there is a power outage. "Luckily that's not very o‚en as our network is 99.9 per cent resilient" says Sam Fuller, head of customer services at UK Power Net- works. "But because we only engage with them rarely, we have to make sure that when we do it's first class." With 8.3 million connected homes across London, the South East and the East of England, that means providing choice and allowing customers to engage by whatever means they decide. It also means being fleet of foot, with the ability to scale up at a moment's notice should the worst happen. In terms of accessibility, it's about ensur- ing that whatever channel customers choose, they get the same level of service and the same information. "It would be very simple to drive everything towards self-service and never speak to a human, but we've found that because we have such diverse communi- ties, there are different needs across them," says Fuller. "If there's a big power outage in London, we find our social media channels get very busy. Lots of customers migrate to that chan- nel; it's their channel of choice. Whereas in East England, in some of the more rural and coastal areas, we see much more telephone traffic. "So we have to be agile, and offer cus- tomers that choice, not push them down the route that suits us, or is the most efficient for us. We also provide consistency of informa- tion across all the channels. So for example when a power outage happens, we have a summary message that is used for our web- site, for our messaging, and for our social media team." Fuller joined UK Power Networks just over six-and-a-half years ago from a senior role at Barclays, which he says was focused on customer service and bringing in innovative approaches. He's brought that mindset to UK Power Networks and helped the company earn a consistently high ranking in Ofgem's annual table for stakeholder engagement. UK Power Networks has one main con- tact centre where it has centralised its teams and multi-skilled them, but during weather events when it gets busier it can scale up quickly. "If you look at the lightning strikes that happened in the summer, you go very rapidly from an average day where we might get around 2,500 calls to nearer 12,000," explains Fuller. "We have 900 support staff who may work in departments like HR and procurement that we can call on to create six mini-contact centres in emergencies. But we also plan Empowering the people In the first of a series of case studies on leaders in customer engagement, Sam Fuller at UK Power Networks talks to Denise Chevin about rapid omni- channel scale up, a new sign language service and 'what3words'. The right partner For over a decade, UK Power Networks has worked with cloud communications provider Content Guru to transform its customer com- munications. The partnership has deployed 30 services, creating a cutting-edge omni- channel estate within the storm® platform and powering enhanced customer engagement for approximately 19 million customers. Working with Content Guru has allowed UK Power Networks' entire communications estate to be co-designed, creating a bespoke service made in-line with the company's requirements. storm was integrated with ENMAC, UK Power Networks' electricity monitoring system, to feed real-time data into services; customers can now navigate over-the-phone to access automated voice prompts with up-to-date infor- for how the engagement might ramp up. If we see it's going to be busy in London, for example, we upscale in a slightly different way and anticipate social media being espe- cially busy." Fuller says text message is still the most popular channel, together with online. "Over time we are seeing telephone traffic being reduced, and that's a combination of inno- vating through new channels and being open and transparent. A big part of it is also about cutting down on repeat callers, which is about first time resolution. "If we focus on getting things right the first time, the benefit in terms of satisfaction and resourcing is tenfold." Allowing all staff to see customer engage- ment history as a "golden thread of infor- mation" means it is easier to get first-time resolution. UK Power Networks has worked closely with Content Guru over the past ten years to develop an omni-channel engage- ment platform in a genuinely partnership approach (see box, below). "The fact that we have our information absolutely joined up means that when we measure things like repeat callers and cus- tomer satisfaction, we're delighted by what we see. The effort that we've put into that golden thread, that consistency of informa- tion, really comes through."

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