Page 38 - Gi flipbook August 2018

IGEM NEWS | Young Persons Paper Competition 2018

IMPROVING CUSTOMER

SATISFACTION ON MAINS

REPLACEMENT PROGRAMMES

(WHILE KEEPING OUR CUSTOMERS SAFE AND WARM)

By Samuel Jones, Year 3 Build & Replace Apprentice
for Wales & West Utilities and YPPC 2018 winner

FIGURE 1: Still from video: “Explaining works”

ales & West Utilities just for the physical role, but also for get to the local manager in the first
is one of the UK’s speaking to customers and answering place. This would mean we would
gas distribution any questions they may have before, save money as a company and reduce
networks that during and after a project. our customer complaints, ultimately
operates across This made me aware of the improving customer satisfaction.
WWales and the importance of delivering excellent
South West of England. It is customer service from the engineers THE IDEA
responsible for keeping 7.5 million themselves, while remembering they During my third year, I was involved in
customers safe and warm by are also doing a very difficult and our corporate Championship Cup
transporting gas through 35,000km often challenging job. Competition, where I played a key role
of pipes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a Wales & West Utilities has a in writing, producing and editing a
week, 365 days a year. commitment to its customers: “If short video explaining exactly how we
While undertaking an service issues and complaints arise, delivered excellent customer service
apprenticeship with Wales & West we’ll resolve them quickly and to improve our customer satisfaction
Utilities in 2015, I quickly realised professionally. We have local scores. (See Figure 1)
that as a Build & Replace Engineer managers on hand to oversee each I created this video using an online
we are often the only interaction a process, and we’ll visit customers cloud-based program, which had the
customer has on a mains replacement when requested.” advantage of being very low cost
programme (in which we replace At this point, I realised that maybe (around £70 per month).
customers’ old metallic gas pipes for the best commitment I could make as It also has a one-off licence fee of
new plastic pipes). an engineer would be to resolve and £75, giving Wales & West Utilities
Our engineers are responsible not answer any service issues before they copyright for all the material both

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