SSEN took just 52 seconds to answer Storm Otto calls

SSEN’s response to Storm Otto shows a dramatic improvement in the firm’s customer service performance during extreme weather events.

In 2021, SSEN was one of several companies marred by customer complaints over prolonged call-waiting times following the devastating Storm Arwen.

However, SSEN customers affected by last week’s Storm Otto faced average waits of less than a minute to have their calls answered.

The improved performance has been attributed to the company’s mobilisation of hundreds of additional call handlers.

At a meeting of the House of Commons Scottish Affairs select committee on Monday (20 February), which had originally been organised to follow up utilities’ response to November 2021’s Storm Arwen, MPs grilled network companies on how they had coped with last weekend’s event.

They included SSE’s network arm, which covers the Highlands and Islands of Scotland that bore the brunt of Otto with wind speeds of up to 80mph across much of its area.

Mark Rough, director of customer operations at SSEN, said the storm resulted in loss of power to 43,000 of the network company’s homes and businesses.

However he said that power had been restored to 95% of customers affected within 24 hours and 99% within 48.

This meant only 200 customers were still cut off after the two day mark beyond which networks are obliged to pay compensation for interruption of service.

Rough said SSEN’s engagement of an external provider to provide an additional 500 customer service operatives during storms had helped to keep average call waiting times to 52 seconds. He said: “Having more people to deal with it and the manner in which we deal with the customers, being more informed, has helped the situation greatly.”

Rough also said that “hugely increased” volumes of traffic on the company’s Power Track app meant SSEN was alerted to specific areas of damage to the network, particularly where individual customers were cut off due to faults below sub-station level and had not phoned in.

But he said that the damage resulting from Otto had also been less severe than Arwen, partly because the high wind speeds had been less prolonged.

Guy Jefferson, chief operating officer at Scottish Power Energy Networks that covers central Scotland, said it had been “business as usual” for the network during Otto.

He also said the company is in discussions with the UK government about being allocated its own section of the radio spectrum so that it can build a more “robust” telecommunications network during storms.

Jefferson said he hoped this new spectrum would be opened up over the next year as part of the special re-opener Ofgem has set up to fund network improvements arising from Storm Arwen.