Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | APRIL 2021 | 25 Customers "Joining up investment plans on a regional basis is allowing us an opportunity to deliver better value." Liz Barber, chief executive, Yorkshire Water "A proliferation in channels, changes in technology and changing patterns for trust in institutions… it makes it more diffi cult for people to access trusted information sources and this risks information inequality." Claire Forbes, senior director of corporate communications "There's a real opportunity now to use lessons from the pandemic to focus on innovation, which is genuinely inclusive." Meghna Tewari, head of retail market policy, Ofgem "The energy transition needs £200bn-£300bn invested in people's homes… it's a vast amount of money and it will only come from activating the able-to-pay market. It won't come from government subsidised schemes, important though those are." Mike Lewis, chief executive, Eon "By getting the regulation and consumer protection right it will mean that whatever changes consumers are considering, the process feels simple, accessible and fair to them." Gillian Cooper, head of energy policy, Citizens Advice in association with Consumer protections must be safeguarded As utilities leaders discussed the challenges and opportunities for their organ- isations in a net zero future, a key area of concern was that new services and markets will create new forms of inequality and customer detriment. Ed Dodman, head of regulatory a airs at Ombudsman Services, and Gil- lian Cooper, head of energy policy at Citizens Advice, both said this was a worry for their organisations and that they were working with government and regulators to ensure appropriate protections and redress routes were available in future. Dodman said an area of interest for the Ombudsman is electric vehicle ser- vices, where there is currently no clear pathway for a dissatis• ed or troubled customer to resolve situations where they feel they have been treated unfairly. Meanwhile, Cooper pinpointed Citizens Advice's call for a Net Zero Homes Guarantee as an example of its work to ensure our net zero future includes appropriate protections for all consumers. With heat decarbonisa- tion an urgent decarbonisation priority, Cooper explained that having a clear approach to informing, supporting, and protecting consumers as they make choices about changing their heating options is critical, echoing comments made by other speakers who suggested that a government-backed public information campaign is needed to engage consumers in their net zero role. "If we're going to get this [transition] right for people," said Cooper, "we need to spend as much time designing the right customer journeys as we do designing the right incentives for companies or how we pay for infrastructure. Because without the support and buy-in of everyone in this country, there won't be a net zero transition." Protecting the vulnerable Consumer vulnerability has swelled with every passing month of the coronavirus pandemic and has driven bereavement, • nancial hardship and mental health pres- sures. Utilities need to ensure they respond intelligently to deliver e• ective support and sustain customer trust, agreed speakers in a dedicated session at the Customer Summit, chaired by Utility Week reporter Adam John. Service providers across sectors are struggling to respond e• ectively to the ris- ing proportion of their customers experiencing vulnerability of one sort or another. As ever, experts in the • eld agree the key to getting the response right lies in truly understanding what support customers need, and this depends on detailed inter- rogation of myriad forms of data. Bringing a view from beyond the utilities sector, Alison Jaap, customer director at challenger bank First Direct, said the company had been working hard on adapting its approach to data segmentation to tailor its interactions and services for vulner- able and non-vulnerable customers. "That is giving us incredible insight into what those customers want," she said. By the end of the year, she added, it should also underpin a signi• cant improvement in the bank's ability to identify emerging signs of vulnerability in customers and get ahead of extreme situations. Building on this theme, Anglian Water's Samantha Ross shared how it has applied speech analytics to mine call centre recordings for information about the most common forms of vulnerability which present in the roughly 21,000 phone contacts its agents pick up every week. In recent months the water company has found that around 14 per cent of the calls it receives include some form of vulnerability disclosure, with 25 per cent of these mentioning bereavement. In response, Ross said Anglian had introduced a dedicated bereavement line to prioritise calls. Responding to vulnerable customers e• ectively has always been a challenge for utilities. But in the wake of the pandemic that challenge has taken on a new scale which is pushing companies to look again at the ways in which digital innovation, intelligent use of data and partnerships can allow them to manage rising pressures on their resources.

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