For the parent of one autistic child a power cut doesn’t just bring the inconvenience of being without electricity. It brings fear.
During one recent storm, a UK Power Networks customer agent fielded a call from this family and after resolving their query, decided to go an unusual extra mile. Logging in to the company’s corporate Amazon account, they ordered an action figure of the 6’3, 120kg WWE champion Roman Reigns. For this child, Roman is more than a mere toy, he is their protection against the dark.
This example sums up the central tenet of UKPN’s view on serving its customers, a philosophy which encourages staff to look at what a loss of power means to individual consumers and how to mitigate this. It is also, the company adds, one of the key reasons it is currently the only utility in the top ten companies of the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) and one of only two in the top 50, with the other being Northern Powergrid.
“Where the rubber hits the road for us is understanding…when you understand what customers need, such as through research, staying really on the pulse of what’s going on in customers’ lives, and what are they needing from you,” says Ian Cameron, the distribution network operator (DNO)’s director of customer service and innovation.
“Just think about how much has changed in the UK in the last couple of years, how much has changed in our ecosystem, those externalities on our businesses are significant. If you understand that, you can then turn that into insight, you can then affect change.”
He is speaking to Utility Week off the back of the latest UKCSI, a report which measures customer satisfaction with a variety of sectors published by the UK Institute of Customer Service. The most recent report however makes for grim reading for utilities overall, with satisfaction with the sector plummeting to its lowest level since 2015 after falling 2.8 percentage points (ppts) in the past year.
Average satisfaction with energy and water companies is 71.7%, with energy faring worst out of the two. Satisfaction with energy has declined 3.8 ppts year-on-year, to 70.3%, with the biggest decline in the area of pricing. Average satisfaction with water companies fell 1.1 ppts to 74.8%.
Bucking this trend is UKPN, which was given a score of 85.4 and ranked third overall, coming in behind John Lewis and First Direct, and was recognised for customer experience, complaint handling, customer ethos, emotional connection, and ethics.
Yet while over the past three years UKPN has been commended for its customer service, this has not always been the case.
Says Cameron: “We know what bottom place feels like, I think that’s important to state. Five, six years ago, three licenses across the 14 (DNOs) were consistently vying for the last three places, so we know what the bottom feels like and that’s not a pleasurable place to be.”
Achieving such a high ranking is no mean feat for a utility, especially considering the backdrop of the race to net zero and an unprecedented cost of living crisis.
For the head of the company’s service delivery centre Alex Williams, it all boils down to the impact UKPN’s services have on its customers.
He says: “The question the advisors ask is, what’s the impact? That’s the word we use to the customer, impact. What’s the impact of having no power? And it really varies. It varies from domestic customers, to businesses to vulnerable customers. The guys have got a real repertoire of actions and things they can do depending on those various outcomes.
“We’ve got a corporate Amazon account, they can get on and order Roman Reigns, a WWE figure, because that was what we ascertained was important to that customer. We’ve got corporate accounts with Deliveroo and Uber Eats so you can get food delivered to people. For vulnerable customers we can send them out medical packs to keep their diabetes medication cold.”
Empowering agents to deliver the optimal service levels is something UKPN prides itself on, with the company conducting extensive research into how best to utilise and make the most of their teams.
Hannah Ngoma, head of customer change, leads this research and explains how UKPN strives to foster engagement within its workforce.
She says: “So one of the first things we needed to understand was, it is our people who are delivering service. And we spent a long time with our people, understanding what they need, the tools and support that they need, to deliver fantastic service and they do a brilliant job.
“That comes across, a customer will forgive mistakes if people show care and a customer can trust the organisation. So the fundamental thing around journeys wasn’t the data, it was about embedding a service culture in our organisation.”
She further explains that UKPN then sought to understand more about customer pain points and what really matters to them, a process which resulted in three key takeaways.
“Essentially, as the context changes and there’s pressures and challenges and whatever else in the wider world, they told us that they want impact minimised.
“They told us that they wanted reassurance and support and care, and it’s particularly tailored to understanding what that context meant. If customers are vulnerable, and they’ve got specific needs, understand what that means for me in my circumstances.
“And then thirdly, make it easy. Customer effort is a massive thing. You have got to make it easy.”
The upheaval from the pandemic and ensuing cost of living crisis, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, has thrown up even more challenges for a sector that is facing an unprecedented amount of criticism of late . It is in this wider context that Ngoma says consumers have become much less tolerant of error.
She adds: “What we’re seeing in this current context is tolerance for error, tolerance for inconvenience, is completely falling. Customers are just intolerant, whether that’s a website crashing, whether it’s waiting on the phone, whether it’s having to deal with two people instead of one etc.
“That’s what we look at and data, we are constantly listening to customer feedback. We’re getting feedback from our people on the frontline, whether that’s our customer advisors, whether it’s our field teams, because that richness of data and insight is what tells us that’s where we’re going wrong on those three points, that’s what we need to fix.”
Cameron interjects with a stat from a previous UKCSI which said for every 1% employee engagement increases, you can expect a 0.41% increase in your customer satisfaction.
“Because highly engaged people feel highly empowered to deliver the right outcomes for their customers,” he adds.
Yet it’s not only down to specialised customer agents to deliver customer service, with people working in finance and even asset management personnel stepping in to support their customer-facing colleagues in times of need.
Says Cameron: “In a storm, Alex’s team don’t go ‘oh, my word I’m on my own because I’m now getting hammered by loads of calls’. What happens is we rally around. So we’ve got an additional 500 people; finance people, asset management people, people in back offices. Within minutes they put a headset on, go online from home, and can be become call agents. They are trained and they absolutely love it.
“What it does is it allows people who never talk to customers to really engage and understand.”
Not every vulnerable consumer will want, or for that matter expect, their local network operator to send them an action figure in the event of a power cut. Many will require more pressing measures such as a hot meal or a place to store their medication.
Yet that WWE toy serves as a strong reminder that each consumer is impacted by power cuts in their own unique way. After all, it’s not about the power – it’s about the impact.
