Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/736974
NETWORK / 33 / OCTOBER 2016 I N N O V AT I O N R E S T R A I N T G I V E T H E P E O P L E W H AT T H E Y W A N T DEPUT Y EDITOR LUCINDA DANN NET WORK Mike Reynolds, director of heat, SSE Enterprise Utilities, explains why SSE is backing the heat calculator "A WIN WIN" "This service called heat, most people don't understand what it is and what they are buying. The market has moved very rapidly over the last couple of years, its gone from very small to real growth with strong support from government, and we think customers need a recourse to understanding the prices that they are paying and it needs to be more than just coming to SSE." "A lot of customers don't want to understand, one of the reasons they like it is you press go and there's heat, you don't have to worry about it. There's no boiler to maintain, there's no operational responsibility on the individual. I would say that 95% of our customers don't care. However, for the ones that do, it's important that information is available to them." "I see this as being of real value in helping to standardise the approach to pricing across networks, there is a challenge of retrospectively applying it to existing networks, but I expect that will happen at some point in the future as well. There's not that many networks in the UK, we are at the beginning of a very exciting time for this tool to launch." "It's a basic tool of analysis, it doesn't include a lot of things that are associated with running and operating a heat network. As a benchmarking exercise, I think it's very useful; as a comparator it's a good reference point to have a conversation with your supplier to understand why your price is what it is." "Looking forward with this tool, it will be interesting to see how you can factor the technology change into price modelling. How you evolve that and how you maintain it as some kind of standardisation while understanding that you are delivering a service and therefore the cost basis associated with delivering that service will be different from network to network." As already explored in this issue, a major driver – rightly or wrongly – behind innovation is a push to incorporate the results into "business as usual" practice. But just because something has been proven a viable proposition, does that mean it should automatically be adopted? Or should network operators be selective about what they take forward? Points of view at Network's conference earlier this month were surprisingly aligned on most subjects – except this. One speaker argued that an innovation should only be adopted if there is a clear need. Another DNO has chosen to incorporate an innovation because it will collect data, even if it doesn't yet know why that data will be useful. Which is the right approach is di€ cult to say, but the whole concept of innovation is to do something without necessarily knowing what it will ultimately achieve. Real innovators give the people what they didn't know they wanted, before they want it. For example, using analytics to analyse tone and language of customer interactions to head o„ complaints before they happen. But sometimes, people really don't want something. I have yet to encounter anybody with a gripe about the hindrance of a headphone jack, and yet one leading market "innovator" has recently decided to make this innocent stalwart of mobile technology the target of its latest innovative push. What the people really want is a battery that doesn't degrade so quickly. What use is an innovation that will improve the listening experience while also placing strain on a weak link, leaving the user permanently in search of a plug and charger? I can't help but think that rather than applying analytics to customer engagement because it's possible – an approach that could be undermined by the British aptitude for dry humour and sarcasm – a more successful, if slightly less exciting, approach might be to train customer operatives so they are ready to deal with complaints quickly and e€ ciently, whatever they might be.