Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/386110
28 | 26th september - 2nd october 2014 | UtILItY WeeK Customers Market view B y 2020, a customer's experience of a power outage will be fundamentally different from today. When a power outage occurs, the householder will receive a message within minutes explaining what has happened, giving advice and setting expectations. Regular updates, additional advice and signposting will follow, enabling customers to plan. There will also be a choice of chan- nels through which customers can choose to access this support. When the outage is over, the loop is closed with a final proactive message. It will be neat, simple and highly satisfying for customers – just as every good customer experience should be. None of this is revolutionary, but it will involve considerable change for electricity distribution network operator (DNO) busi- ness models and modes of thinking. From a customer experience perspec- tive, the most important thing to under- stand is the direct link between the impact of an outage on a customer and their level of satisfaction. If you can reduce the impact – by making customers better prepared or improving their ability to cope – you will increase their satisfaction. The trouble is that traditional responses to outages have focused on rectifying the fault and providing customers with infor- mation reactively. Of course, fixing the fault is important, but customers today demand much more, including the ability to cope proactively with the situation while it lasts. In other words, they are looking to DNOs to help lessen the impact. By 2020, the organisations at the top of the customer satisfaction league table will have mastered how to do this and will have an array of advice and practical support for customers. If a customer's freezer contents are ruined by a long outage, could they order like for like replacements from Tesco to be delivered the very next day? If an outage occurs, should a customer be able to track the progress of restoration in the same way as they can now track a pack- age being delivered? Might electricity-dependent business customers of all sizes be proactively offered advice by the DNO to prepare and protect their business in the event of an outage? These offerings would empower custom- ers and mitigate impact. At the turn of the millennium, DNOs were using landline telephone number rec- ognition from inbound customer calls to help locate faults and automate information provision. Advances in communications technology and pricing changes have driven a switch from predominantly landline contact to con- tact mainly via mobile or other channels across most sectors. Many predict that lan- dlines will become redundant at work, then at home, in the next ten years, replaced by mobile phones, voice over the internet, and non-voice channels. A choice of channels is now a key cus- tomer expectation and primarily customers want both information-only and interactive options. That does not mean DNOs have to create omni-channel environments necessar- ily, but they will need to provide a selection of channels, supported by a coherent chan- nel strategy. The most successful organisations will pick their channel offerings carefully, using a deep understanding of customer behaviour to determine which ones they pick and how they are used – they will also need to be flex- ible about their choices because customer channel preferences change quickly, and this will only become more true in the future. Success in managing these changes will require staff skilled in adjusting tone and style for different channels. The potential for interaction between channels should also be taken into account and appropriate second- ary channels put in place. For example, where customers are being encouraged to interact via a website, the must-have secondary support channel is webchat, which is growing in popularity. One of the fundamental shis we antici- pate for DNOs by 2020 is moving from primar- ily inbound customer contact during outages to primarily outbound customer contact. Changing outage experience It is no longer enough for DNOs to fix outages as quickly as possible – they must also proactively communicate and focus on impact reduction for customers, says Nicola Eaton Sawford. Projected customer contact channel Profile, 2015-23 1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 Telephone contacts, inbound Digital contacts, inbound Telephone contacts, outbound Digital contacts, outbound 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 Channel volume (%) Source: Northern Powergrid