Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 6TH - 12TH APRIL 2018 | 23 Operations & Assets any problems with machinery or equipment in the plant. The company says that interpreting the data can be an art form, but modern soware can help make it more of a science. Jurgen Resch, energy indus- try manager at Copa-Data, says: "Britain has been using hydro- electric power for centuries, but with increasing pressure to meet renewable energy targets, perhaps it is time it took hydro- electric power to the next level." If you have an asset or project you would like to see featured in this slot, email: paulnewton@ fav-house.com. C ustomer service has never been such a talking point and it's no secret that the utilities sector in particular has more to do to ensure custom- ers' expectations are exceeded on a regular basis. Customers want to access information relating to utility services as and when they need it. The January 2018 customer satis- faction index produced by the Institute of Customer Service put utilities eleventh out of thirteen sectors for customer satisfaction. Nevertheless there are massive leaps forward tak- ing place throughout the sector and these should be recog- nised and built upon. March 2018 saw the 'Beast from the East' and Storm Emma hitting homes through- out the UK. The result was a surge of customers contacting their utility company about issues with their water or energy supply. The type of communications you received would have varied depending on which part of the country you live in and who supplies your water or energy. Many of the water compa- nies have started to make giant leaps in customer communica- tions in recent years. Anglian Water, Bristol Water, SES Water and South East Water all benefit from their respective "In Your Area" communica- tion services, made available to the general public via their websites. The In Your Area services were designed and built by digdat to allow events and incidents to be logged and updated. In incidents such as the recent storms, these come into their own, with homeown- ers able to carry out in-bound reporting, as well as signing up to be notified of any incidents in their area and requesting updates and notifications. Customers throughout the UK used the service over the weekend of the storms, enabling water companies to keep them informed, signifi- cantly reducing in-bound call volumes and allowing the customer service teams to deal effectively with the more urgent calls coming in. This is just the beginning for technology-driven com- munications. The future is exciting. The ability to use data to not just tell customers about incidents that have happened, but also to predict potential issues and events, will allow water and energy companies to step up their communications and in turn their customer ser- vice. As a result teams will be able to more effectively manage resources and send timely, accurate messages to custom- ers alerting them to the risk of disruption as well as inform- ing them of live incidents. The arrival of such notifications allows people to plan their lives around an event, easing the scale of the problem and the impact it has on them. The key to taking customer satisfaction to the next level in the utilities sector is to work with customers and to embrace innovation and technology. As John Russell, Ofwat's Senior Director of Strategy and Policy, commented in January: "It will be innovation that separates the exceptional companies from the rest." For more information, visit: www.digdat.co.uk EXPERT VIEW JOHN BENNETT, BUSINESS MANAGER, DIGDAT The communications revolution Technology-driven customer communications can drive customer satisfaction to the next level.

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