You couldn’t make it up…
I generally try to vary the subject of my blogs each time both because it reflects the different discussions and experiences that I have in the course of every week but also to address the varying interests of readers from across the different parts of our industry. This week however I will make an exception by returning again to the topic of the customer experience. Last time I was referring to what we were being told by car buyers in focus groups that ICDP are currently running (France, Germany and UK now completed, our last Dutch one this evening). My inspiration this week is a personal one based on a bad initial experience with my home energy supplier, EDF, and such an incredibly bad follow up experience whilst they try to rectify the original mistake that you literally couldn't make it up. Whilst it is a personal experience, I think there are some broader lessons to be learned that are applicable to all industries.
My wife and I moved into our current home 18 months ago recognising there was a significant amount of work that needed to be done to reflect our needs but also to add some improvements. Amongst these was to upgrade the electricity supply which I chose to do by switching to 3 phase rather than single phase. For anyone unfamiliar with the technicalities, single phase is normal for domestic premises whereas three phase is normal for industrial and commercial premises, though both types exist everywhere. The advantage for me was that it would allow the installation of a higher capacity BEV charger operating at 22 kW rather than 7 kW. In the UK the installation is handled by the grid company and that went extremely smoothly. However the actual meter to record your usage is handled by your utility supplier, which in my case is EDF. Their initial failure was that despite giving them more notice than their maximum booking window of six weeks, they failed to coordinate the fitting of a new three phase smart meter for the date of the installation of the supply. That was in itself frustrating, but the grid company temporarily transferred the old meter so at least we still had power.
As nobody in customer service seemed able to tell me what date they would come to fit the meter, I had already escalated my complaint to the CEO's office, Mr Simone Rossi. You should perhaps always be suspicious when a CEO’s e-mail address is readily available on the Internet and indeed it turns out that there is a staff dedicated to handling escalated complaints. When their fitter (EDF call them engineers, but as a chartered engineer myself by training and early work experience, I find it offensive that the term is widely abused in the UK for anyone who picks up a spanner) did turn up, he then proceeded to fit a single phase meter despite the supply very obviously (3 fuses) being three phase. A further escalated complaint resulted in another appointment where the fitter had the good sense to phone when he saw that his work instruction was for a three phase meter and he was only qualified for single phase, so had neither the skills or the parts to the work. Yet another complaint and I was told the scheduling system did not have a flag too ensure the three phase metre was to be installed as opposed to the more common single phase and therefore they were unable to make any appointments until that was resolved. Despite this I still got an automated e-mail promising me a new appointment in a couple weeks’ time.
My conclusion from this and the point that I want to share is not that EDF must be one of the most incompetent organisations on the planet and you should avoid them for your utility supplies at all costs, but it seems impossible in that organisation for anyone to pick a phone up in order to solve a customer problem. At all stages whether through their online portal, there normal appointments booking team, normal complaints team or the CEO escalated complaints team, the standard response has been along the lines of confirming or not whether a booking is in the system and offering dates only if availability show up on the system. Nobody made any effort to investigate further, nobody backed up requests in the system with a phone call or an e-mail asking for confirmation from the field team that the right person had been assigned to do the right job, nobody felt it would be appropriate to ask a fitter with the right skill to do a little bit of overtime in order to spend the one hour that is required to swap a meter. The problem is not only that the systems are clearly broken or that the staff either don't care or have become weary through the volume of customer complaints, it is that they all feel it is appropriate or necessary to work only through a standard process that fails to meet the needs of at least this customer, and I presume others.
As I said this is not unique to EDF or to utility companies. There is much anecdotal evidence related to the delivery of new cars during the post pandemic shortages, the delivery of parts for vehicles that are off road and the attempts to force new car buyers through an artificially restricted set of processes and systems as part of recent agency implementations. Customers have been left in the dark, frustrated and often out of pocket because manufacturers or dealer representatives have put process and systems ahead of personal service. In an industry like ours you cannot have a free-for-all where processes and systems are bypassed, but there will always be occasions when in order to fix a customer problem you need to go use your initiative, fix the problem and then reconcile that action with the internal systems and processes afterwards.