Utility Week

38 | JULY 2021 | UTILITY WEEK Utility Week Live Summit special report Embracing the new customer service reality As utilities move to hybrid ways of working in the wake of the Covid pandemic, the overarching priority must be the quality of the service they can offer to customers, says Adam John. F rom shiing large numbers of staff to home working to accelerating the use of digital communications channels, the utilities sector has been widely praised for its response to the issues thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet with millions of people placed on fur- lough or finding themselves out of work com- pletely, vulnerability has struck people who could never have previously imagined they'd be forced to seek financial help. Utilities have had to adapt their strategies quickly but the focus is now on the long-term picture and how the sector can enable customers to engage more, as well as ensuring the con- sumer experience keeps pace with changing needs. With a wide range of oen complex cus- tomer needs to meet, ensuring the right communications channels are available has become a key challenge. During the first day of Utility Week Live Summit, sponsored by Capita, several indus- try experts joined a panel session followed by a workshop titled "Transforming cus- tomer service post-pandemic". Opening the aernoon's talks, Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service, perhaps summarised it best when she outlined how the pandemic had presented an opportu- nity for organisations to pause and reflect on what their experiences mean for customers going forward. She said: "There's a really important opportunity for us as organisations to press pause and to really reflect on what has gone well and therefore what do we want to con- tinue to do, what should we stop doing and what maybe should we start doing as we enter the next phase." She highlighted how the mode of working for utilities had changed. The shi to home working, out of necessity, happened almost overnight for vast swathes of the population. Going forward industries are recognising that the future of working will be a hybrid model of office and remote working and Cau- son believes this flexibility can work well for both utilities and their customers. She said: "A move to hybrid working is probably the number one topic at the moment that I am hearing spoken about across pretty much every sector. Not so much about wanting to move to it, because I think the future world is about living in hybrid, but how do we make that work? Particularly, how do we make that work well for customers?" Ensuring utilities make it easier for cus- tomers to communicate with them was a key area of concern for delegates. This has become more apparent over the course of the pandemic as a huge increase in demand makes the need for a robust, omni-channel communications approach ever more clear. Throughout the past year utilities have reported seeing more customers use alterna- tive communications channels. In the case of Ovo Energy, the supplier brought forward plans to introduce its webchat service in May last year in response to the increased demand. Ovo's data director, Katie Russell, explained how the company sees technol- ogy as key to providing the right customer service.

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