We have contracts to operate a growing number of other utility companies’ assets on their behalf. Achieving high levels of customer satisfaction on behalf of our clients is important to us and we work to a variety of customer service and satisfaction measures, as well as monitoring client satisfaction.
Recently we’ve had success in our metering business, where we have a contract to fix meters on behalf of British Gas. In the first year of measurement we achieved a client satisfaction rating of 81% in 2008/09, against a target of 75%. The target for 2009/10 is 76%. The survey assesses satisfaction from both British Gas employees and their end user customers.
We strive to operate flexibly to accommodate our client’s requirements, meeting customer needs and finding ways to improve our service. We’ve worked to improve the information regarding meter work sent to customers and to make appointments more flexible for them, introducing two-hour banded and half day appointments. During the year, our employees spent the night-shift at British Gas’s Edinburgh call centre and there were reciprocal visits by British Gas’s employees to look at ways of improving how we work together. We‘ve also held workshops with British Gas call centre agents in Edinburgh and our meter workers to review best practices.
In our gas business, where we operate the network for our client, Northern Gas Networks, end customer satisfaction met our ongoing target of 77%. During the year the measurement methodology changed – under the previous method performance would have been 80%, against a previous year’s score of 76.5%. We aim to reduce the disruption associated with repair and replacement work to help support customer satisfaction levels. In the last league table of customer satisfaction published by Ofgem, Northern Gas Networks was first for repair and second for replacement.
We operate and maintain the electricity network for Electricity North West. End customer satisfaction was 82% during 2008/09 compared to 75% the previous year, against an ongoing target of 85%. A 'Power in an Hour' campaign focused our employees on our key performance measures and improved our telephony system to help provide customers with better information when there’s a fault. Ofgem, the economic regulator for the gas and electricity industry, also carries out its own survey of customer satisfaction. In 2008/09 we scored 4.52 (out of 5) against a target of 4.4, our best ever performance.
Across all of our non-water contracts we’ve introduced a standardised approach for the 'front end' customer activity. The aim is to develop and implement a standard approach to the way we manage the front end customer experience. This has concentrated on customer satisfaction measurement and insight, knowledge management support and soft skills training for front office customer staff. We also worked to set quality standards and monitor these in call handling. In some areas we have also developed strategies and implementation plans to make more effective use of customer channels such as text messaging, web and telephone.
We have also completed the roll out of the 'Customer at the Heart' programme across all of our non-water contracts. The aim of this work is four fold:
- A consistent approach to the way we manage customer contact which is similar to the regulated businesses
- Improved customer satisfaction through a better customer experience
- Engaged employees who know exactly how they are performing and how they impact our customers
- Efficiency improvement through a more consistent and repeatable way of doing things leading to 'right first time'
Next year we’ll be working down the service chain to the field operation as well as continuing and embedding the work under way.