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In the first of what we hope will be many nominations from the sector, we celebrate the ingenuity in the face of adversity of two UK Power Networks (UKPN) employees, who developed and rapidly rolled out a way of helping customers cope under lockdown.
Kellie Dillon and Kelvin Lee, who work in in UKPN’s innovation team, were nominated for recognition in Utility Week’s Keeping Us Connected series by Ian Cameron, the company’s head of customer service and innovation.
The pair came up with an app, which hosts useful information to customers such as ways of exercising at home, tips on coping with isolation, health support and specific information on registering for priority services with UKPN and other utilities.
The app was developed and then pushed out to 3,000 UKPN frontline workers less than two weeks after the lockdown was announced.
Cameron said: “Considering these are engineers and not their day job or forte, I have been really impressed.”
He added: “It is vital that we continue to help our customers in vulnerable circumstances and support communities to the best of our ability, and in the current climate we’re looking for new, innovative and useful ways to do that.”
Kelvin said: “It was great to get involved and contribute to helping our customers and fellow staff by giving them key information. After engaging with my team to collate the most relevant information, I put myself in the shoes of a colleague using a mobile device, and asked myself what’s the best way to navigate around the app, and thought about the best way to organise the information to make it a smooth experience for the user.”
Kellie said: “It was a privilege to be asked to help develop an application that would provide our brave field engineers with information to keep them and our customers informed. I hope by having all the useful information at a touch of a button will make their jobs that little bit easier.”
Keeping Us Connected is a new series from Utility Week in which we highlight the achievements of employees across the utilities sector in getting the UK through lockdown. To nominate a member of your team for recognition, please email jameswallin@fav-house.com.
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