Service provision and effectiveness
The quality of our service provision and the satisfaction of our customers are important. We therefore measure the customer’s perception of our services after every personal customer contact. This is because we want customers to experience doing business with us as effortless.
|
KPIs |
Note |
Unit |
Result for 2022 |
Target for 2023 |
Result for 2023 |
Target for 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Customer satisfaction | |||||||
|
Customer convenience – Consumers* |
Convenience experienced by customers in doing business with Stedin for two types of products, ‘connections’ and ‘(smart) meters’ (excluding Zeeland). |
% |
79 |
79 |
79 |
- | |
|
Customer convenience – Maintenance* |
Convenience experienced by customers in doing business with Stedin for the product ‘meter cupboard problems’. |
% |
85 |
≥ 82 |
87 |
- | |
|
Lead time for connections for low-use consumers** |
Completion of connections for low-use consumers within 18 weeks or on date preferred by customer. |
% |
95 |
≥ 91 |
90 |
≥ 90 | |
- * In 2024, the customer convenience measurement will be replaced by three KPIs: Customer convenience in relation to meters and connections, business customers and meter cupboard problems. The target will be set early in 2024.
- * In 2024, the definition of this metric will be extended to include ‘with ground works’ and a new metric will be added: ‘lead time under 12 weeks for connections for low-use consumers without excavation works (%)’.
Customer satisfaction
To understand the extent to which customers experienced doing business with Stedin as effortless, we ask customers to what extent their experience was one of convenience or inconvenience. The results of this survey are translated into a Customer Effort Score (CES). For consumers and meter cupboard problems (maintenance), we do this all the time. Each month, we report the results as two percentages: the convenience score and the inconvenience score. Among our business customers, we conduct a customer satisfaction survey once a year.
Consumers
We constantly measure the convenience that our customers experience when buying connection and metering products, such as connection installation or removal, capacity reinforcements, smart meter installation and resolving communications failures.
The targets this year were at least 79% convenience and no more than 14% inconvenience. Both targets were achieved, the scores being 79% convenience and 11% inconvenience. The principal developments that contributed to this were:
-
Customers can now make an appointment online for work to be carried out at a time when it suits them. This creates clarity for customers and eases the workload for Stedin’s schedulers.
-
At some customers requesting a smart meter, we first need to remove the old connection. This often took a long time, and it was unclear when the work would be carried out. This process has now been adjusted, so that customers who want a smart meter quickly will always be served within nine weeks.
Meter cupboard problems
We also constantly measure the convenience that our customers experience in our resolution of meter cupboard problems. The targets this year were at least 82% convenience and no more than 8% inconvenience. Both targets were achieved, the scores being 87% convenience and 6% inconvenience. The interactive video ‘I have a power outage’ contributed to this (see box).
‘I have a power outage’
In June, we posted the interactive video ‘I have a power outage’ on our website. With the help of this video, customers can resolve meter cupboard problems for which an engineer is not needed. This means that the Central Outage Desk (CSR) and the Customer Contact Centre (KCC) can be contacted more easily to report other failures, while engineers have more time to deal with grid management. Initial measurements over the period July-September 2023 and a comparison with all of 2022 show an estimated reduction in calls by 7%. Translated to a full year, this means over 9,000 fewer calls.
Projects
With regard to (larger) projects, we measure customer convenience or inconvenience once a year because of the longer project lead times. These include projects such as the installation of large connections or projects involving more than five connections at once.
In 2023, no quantitative measurement was performed as is done for consumers and meter cupboard problems. We conducted (qualitative) interviews with 25 customers of these larger projects, in which we asked them about the convenience and inconvenience they had experienced. This revealed that we still have work to do when it comes to: managing customer expectations regarding aspects such as planning, lead times and congestion, reducing customer inconvenience due to differences in working methods between departments and regions, and our communication on customer tariffs.
Improving our service provision in relation to projects is a key priority in 2024. In 2024, we will not only perform a qualitative measurement (similar to that of 2023) but also two quantitative measurements per project (i.e. all projects) based on questionnaires: immediately after the assignment and immediately after the completion of a project.
Lead time for connections within 18 weeks
Connections put in place within time limit of 18 weeks (as a percentage)
In 2023, we achieved our target of ‘regulated connections put in place within 18 weeks or on date preferred by customer’. We managed to achieve this for 90% of requests. From 2024, this KPI will change in accordance with new requirements from our regulator ACM, and ‘with ground works’ will be added to this metric. We are also expected to complete connections without ground works within 12 weeks or on the date preferred by the customer. The new requirements regarding the time limit for connecting business customers are not yet known.
Increasing effectiveness
As a grid manager, we perform an important social task, funded with public money. We consider it our duty to carry out our services efficiently and to keep costs to a minimum in doing so. The old (five-year) efficiency programme was completed at the end of 2022. Through this programme, we achieved € 166 million in structural savings. The efficiency measures in progress and those yet to be launched have been incorporated into a new programme that not only focuses on efficiency but also on increasing our effectiveness.
The growth of our construction task is accelerating. In order to achieve this task, we are rapidly increasing the capacity of our operational organisation. We do this not only by recruiting and training more staff, but also by deploying our staff and resources more effectively. We need to do more with a larger number of people. This requires faster, smarter and simpler ways of working in order to meet rising demand. This will make us more effective and efficient. We do this, for example, is by carefully prioritising and implementing the requisite changes, in line with our strategic goals. We opt even more purposefully for what will produce the best result, and discontinue initiatives that do not contribute enough. In this way, we can use our ICT and change capacity as effectively as possible. We also deploy innovations to enable our colleagues in the field to use of their time as efficiently as possible. In addition, the acceleration of the task we face and the necessity to build more will require a change in attitude and behaviour from all our employees, including our managers. Among other things, this means setting clear, ambitious but achievable team goals, making agreements on expected outcomes, and finishing what we have started.
