Meeting our customers’ evolving expectations during planned power cuts

Planned power cuts are vital for maintaining and upgrading the electricity network to ensure a safe and reliable supply. While interruptions are crucial to allow engineers to carry out repairs and prevent future outages, they can be inconvenient for customers. Despite strong overall satisfaction with our customer service, we found we were struggling to improve customer satisfaction with our planned power cut journey, despite offering the same service that had previously met expectations.

We worked with the Institute of Customer Service to commission a comprehensive quantitative survey with over 500 customers, both domestic and small business customers, including those in vulnerable circumstances. The learnings we gained helped shape our actions to improve our planned power cut customer experience, including: 

• Customers prefer seasonal support options, so we seasonally rotate the support items available our online portal for customers affect by planned work, offering more relevant support depending on the time of the year. For example, offer torches and electric blankets in the darker, colder winter months
• Customers value timely reminders before planned power cuts, so we have increased outbound calls to offer personalised support, extended notice periods, and now send multiple email reminders ahead of any planned work, while continuing to offer written postal notices for those who prefer traditional communication methods.

For more information on how our customer research and insights has shaped our planned power cut journey, take a look at our latest Impact report.