Utility Week

14 | 6TH - 12TH DECEMBER 2019 | UTILITY WEEK Policy & Regulation Analysis the water sector would be brought back into public ownership, it would be folly to dis- regard public mood. The same arguments could continue to raise their head any time a company puts a foot wrong. A senior industry source points out to Utility Week that customer focus should always remain: "Whoever owns the assets, the important thing is addressing the issue of fairness in bills and continued investment. "We need to improve customers' per- ception of fairness but also to maintain the investment. There's still a lot of investment needed to maintain what's already there but also to improve resilience and protect the environment. Customers view those things as very important. We wouldn't want to go back to starving the industry of investment, because that isn't what customers want." With the future unclear for now, is there another way to shake up the industry, main- tain current levels of innovation and ensure sufficient investment in assets and infra- structure both now and for the future? Skellett believes customers would ben- efit from a different approach. He says: "If you look at the facts for what the industry needs, renationalisation is not the answer. We need real competition. We have vertically integrated monopolies and they don't need to be. We can break those down and bring more competition in. we must keep pushing at the competitive agenda and we need to keep pushing innovation and new agendas." Ruth Williams, water correspondent, Utility Week Market view Empowering field staff The sophisticated field service management technology available today can help utilities address long-standing problems with customer service, says Chris Proctor. A s one of the most in-demand consumer-facing industries, customer expectation of utilities providers has always been high and providers, more o„en than not, have struggled to deliver. Eversmart Energy is the latest supplier to collapse following prolonged customer issues, having been voted the second worst company for customer service by the Energy Ombudsman in 2018. The Consumer Council for Water (CCWater) also recently called out four water companies following a sharp rise in customer complaints. With new competitive providers emerg- ing and regulators such as Ofcom and Ofwat implementing measures to halt poor cus- tomer service, the sector is headed towards a new era. Companies need to change approach or risk irrevocable damage to their reputation and customer loyalty. Changing direction So, how can the industry ensure its history of poor customer service does not become part of its future? Providers must get to the core of the prob- lem. Consumers now value experience over price and product, and the utilities industry needs to evolve rapidly and refocus its pri- orities to keep up with changing customer needs and expectations. While there are various complexities to consider here, technology offers one very capable solution. Taking advantage of next- generation technology will optimise service delivery and generate insights for future improvement. Without this, customer service will remain stuck at a subpar level. What is preventing field workers from delivering efficient services to customers? What obstacles do office teams face when communicating information to mobile opera- tives and customers? How do organisations identify a service issue before it is too late? Field service management (FSM) technol- ogy can unite office teams, mobile workers and end customers, helping to deliver effi- ciencies and an improved overall service. However, many utilities providers still rely upon legacy FSM so„ware and manual pro- cesses. This makes it harder for teams to work productively, which has a direct impact on the customer experience. Arguably, the problem is one of imple- mentation. Eighty-nine per cent of utilities have customer experience firmly on their agenda, however less than half say they are actively improving it. Capitalising on new developments ena- bles companies to lower the costs of their field operations by up to 40 per cent while improving productivity by up to 30 per cent. This efficiency ultimately improves the cus- tomer experience. For instance, optimised job scheduling will ensure the correctly qual- ified engineer is sent to the customer the first time around, reducing return visits. Auto- mation facilitates companies to send SMS messages when the engineer is on the way, thereby giving customers greater confidence in the service they receive. Service faults such as burst pipes and faulty telephone lines are one of the sec- tor's biggest challenges and a common cause of customer complaint. Adopting predic- tive maintenance so„ware provides con- stant monitoring and reporting on assets, so that engineers can pre-empt and remedy faults before the customer experiences any disruption. Look to the cloud Consumers want consistency and clear com- munication from their providers. New devel- opments in FSM apps support field operatives to efficiently complete jobs, share informa- tion with office teams in real time and keep the customer up to date. With cloud-based FSM so„ware, providers can further change the so„ware themselves to ensure they con- tinually meet customer demand. Embracing the future of customer expe- rience in utilities requires future-facing technology. This will improve operational efficiencies and transform customer service levels, for good. Chris Proctor, chief executive, Oneserve continued from previous page "The water sector calls itself a successful industry, but they're only make profit because they are borrowing so much." Ellen Lees, We Own It activist

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