Talking Energy Customers and Continuity of Supply

• Our Responsibilities
• The Issues
• 2010 Performance
• Act Responsibly
• Customers
• Customer service
• Propositions
• Vulnerable customers
• Customer Access to New Technology
• Customers and Continuity of Supply
• Reliable energy
• Low carbon society
• Environment
• Our people
• Data and Assurance
• GRI Index
• 2009 Performance
• 2008 Performance
• What We're Doing
• How we do business

Customers

Customers and Continuity of Supply

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We sold our Central Networks business in 2011 but in 2010 customers were at the heart of everything we did and we worked hard to keep them informed. We each took individual responsibility for our actions and for keeping our promises

Keeping in touch

Central Networks always listened to its customers to ensure we were giving them the service they wanted and expected, especially during a power cut. Our priority was timely, accurate and useful information. So in the last year we offered all our customers the opportunity to receive a call back from us, as soon as we had any updated information. During 2010 we made some 120,000 call backs compared to just 25,000 in 2009.

We know customers liked to receive information from us in different ways, so we gave them a choice. The most widely used feature of our website continued to be our industry-leading live power cut map showing real-time details of both planned and unplanned faults affecting our region. We were also the first DNO to provide live power cut information for customers via their mobile phone. In recent years, the number of web-access mobile phones has increased rapidly, with nearly 10.4m people in the UK surfing the web from their mobile in 2010.

In February 2010 we launched a new multi-channel telephony system, giving customers the option not only to speak to us, but also to exchange texts and emails in real time. The new system helped us to offer improved support to customers by prioritising calls: for example, customers with a power cut – particularly if they’re vulnerable - can be dealt with before customers with a general enquiry.

In addition we were the first DNO to provide outage information via our website. Last year we launched a map detailing historical information so customers could find out when/if they’d been off supply in the past.

We were awarded £175,000 through Ofgem’s Customer Service Reward scheme for our ‘wider communications methods’ including live information to mobile and our new telephony system. We were also awarded £300k by Ofgem for our telephony performance during the regulatory year to March 2010.

Parish Council Engagement

We do our best to limit the number of power cuts on our network but in many instances, they’re outside our control. What we can do, however, is try to ensure that our customers are as prepared as possible. In December 2010 we provided every Parish Council in our distribution area with a demonstration pack which contains useful items a household may need during a power cut.

Customer Panel

We continued to be the only Distribution Network Operator (DNO) to run a permanent Customer Panel, This allowed us to better understand and address the needs of our customers. The panel represented a wide range of customers and key stakeholder groups, such as the police, local authorities, the Major Energy Users Council, the Environment Agency, Consumer Focus and the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID). The panel’s purpose was to provide feedback, advise us of customer concerns, and give us an insight into our customers’ thinking. During 2010, the panel was instrumental in re-designing our planned interruption cards, helping us to remove jargon and make it more customer friendly.