Improving our Customer Service

Jerry O'Sullivan, Head of Network Services, ESB Networks, talks to EM about the efforts being made to improve our customer service.

2005 was a tough year for our teams and customers because of a number of issues. The introduction of SAP (the Market Opening IT System) and associated new processes, the opening of the electricity market itself, the continued level of new business and the effects of business separation have all combined to lead to more pressures on the customers and place huge demands on us. A look at the figures (see chart) will give you an idea of the phenomenal numbers of new connections over the past 5 years, culminating in approximately 90,000 in 2004 and 2005.

The National Customer Contact Centre (NCCC) has also had the similar challenge of delivering an acceptable service in this new open market, where call volumes and average call durations have grown significantly. Great credit is due to all our staff who are working at the customer interface in these circumstances. They have worked extremely hard to keep pace with the demands placed on them. At this stage in ESB Networks, we have effectively recovered from the impacts of SAP/MOIP, way ahead of international experience. Unfortunately, customers are still finding the combination of new MOIP processes, business separation, shop closure and the NCC environment difficult to understand. This is leading to customer frustration and consequent pressure on ESB Networks and NCCC staff.

A second issue is the fact that our biggest challenge in ESB Networks over recent years was to demonstrate to government, the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER), external stakeholders and our customers that ESB Networks could successfully deliver its €3.2bn investment programme. This objective is now achieved and ESB is not criticised in this regard at this stage. To deliver this, we had to make some trade-offs and this affected our service delivery and lead times for new connections. We are now in a position to refocus on customer work and target additional resources to deal with MOIP backlogs and lead times, which I accept are too long.

Plans for 2006 for improving Customer Service:
From detailed discussions with our staff, customers, elected representatives and major customers, here is a summary of our customer concerns:

• They find it difficult to contact us and acquire information
  
• Our lead times are too long
  
• Customers find the new open market process difficult to understand
  

We have developed an ESB Networks Customer Service Improvement plan 2006 - 2010 to address these concerns. This plan is in keeping with Corporate and ESB Networks plans to refocus on the customer and make the customer central to our business Indeed CER has taken a very tough line on customer service and within PR2, penalties/incentives of up to €123m over the period have been set-obviously another reason for us to improve from our current position.

Our objective and serious challenge in 2006 is to ensure that our phone answering and design/construction lead times are within NCCC and customer charter standards. The immediate actions include:

Within ESB Networks:

• Additional design and construction resources will be assigned, as appropriate, to deal with new business and MOIP backlogs. Network Projects and Network Services are already working together to quickly achieve this focus.
  
  
• Ensure that our area phone, referral, complaint, charter management and large range of other customer initiatives are fully effective.
  
  
• Proactively call customers at each stage of the new supply process.
  
  
• Fix shortfalls and bugs in the new SAP/MOIP systems. We have a project on this which will be complete by June 2006.
  
  
• Help customers to understand the new, more complicated open market by working with customer representative bodies. Include a job aid with every application and quote for each type of new supply.
  
  

• Appoint additional agents, as required, to dramatically improve the agent-handled call performance for current volumes and call types.
  
  
• System and process improvements in the operation of NCCC and in Customer Supply (CS) back office.
  
  

We are adamant that working with NCC and across ESB Networks, we will radically transform our customer service throughout 2006. We will treat this customer service initiative as a project and monitor its progress on a monthly basis. I know that our teams will very much welcome and support this urgent initiative as they experience the customer reactions described above both inside and outside of the work place. EM