Clever communication

Clever communication with customers before smart meters are installed, across all channels, is crucial if they are to understand the benefits and get over any cynicism on motives, says Dr Mark K Smith.

By 2020, the UK government wants every home in England, Scotland and Wales to have a smart meter installed. That’s 26 million homes. The motive is a very positive one: an attempt to move away from decades-old, mostly analogue technology that tots up our usage and move towards a device that will actually show the power being consumed in real time and how much it’s actually costing us.

So far, so good.

However, there are one or two minor ­hurdles to overcome.

The task of achieving this huge undertaking falls to the power companies. It is said that this installation challenge is the largest of its kind ever undertaken in Europe. Trained engineers in their thousands will be needed to install and explain the meters to millions of citizens, highlighted by Eon’s recent recruitment push to hire 250 more field staff this year in a bid to ramp up its smart meter rollout.

More challenging still is the fact that smart meters are not compulsory for customers. And while the motive of better knowledge of consumption leading to ­better control of costs is good, the industry has not had the easiest ride with ­consumers’ ­attitudes as oil prices have tumbled but household bills have not.

It’s for this reason that the installation needs to have the very best of customer experiences. It’s a no-brainer that better conservation of power is a good thing – who doesn’t want to stay warm and save money?

However, the benefits are so much greater: with non-renewable sources of power still dominant (60 per cent of electricity was generated from gas or coal in 2015), better conservation will help save these resources and hopefully reduce reliance on imports. While solar and wind are growing rapidly, changing government policy on tariffs and planning challenges may yet lead to a stall in renewables.

So, smart and clever communication with customers before meters are even installed is important – and across all channels, be that print, TV, social media or whatever. People need to understand the benefits and get over any cynicism on motives.

Secondly, the power companies need to be as smart with their workforce as they are with their meters. It is no use throwing people at the problem – recruiting hundreds of call centre staff will be difficult and costly. Worse still, those costs will end up back with the consumer.

Better then to begin as you mean to go on and use every channel possible to help inform customers of the benefits, contact them automatically to set appointments and follow up to see if everything is working as they expected. Longer term, communications could help trigger messages based on real-time usage data – such as “you seem to be using more power than usual, Mr Jones”.

It may sound too complex. But the likes of Sky and Virgin Media, who together have well over 10 million customers, have overcome the challenge of optimising a workforce of engineers. Omni-channel automated communications not only keep the customer in the loop with regards to installations and repairs, but can be used to make sure they are happy all the way through the relationship.

They have got optimised call centre teams who only deal with the “exceptions” rather than attempt to reach millions with the ­simpler challenge of setting an appointment or seeking customers’ views on the service provided – that’s the bit where automating services can make a big difference.

Delivering this kind of smart communication to customers not only keeps them in the loop, but also means that every appointment an engineer makes is most likely to complete. By optimising their work schedules and automating the communications, fewer people are needed on the phone – making the cost of rollout as economic as possible.

And finally, once the communications are open to the customer, it doesn’t take much additional thinking to look to keep that (automated) dialogue going to help customers to get the very most out of their kilowatt hour, while helping to save the climate too.

Mark K Smith, chief executive, ContactEngine