Kenya Power has kicked off this year’s Customer Service Week with a focus to enhance customer engagement for improved service delivery.
In this regard, the Company has announced plans to revamp its digital self-service platforms to enable customers to proactively engage the Company and access various services including printing of bills, monitoring of power outages, online application for electricity connection, targeted and interactive messaging, as well as access to official digitally certified payment receipts.
“One of the key drivers of our current corporate strategy is the digital transformation and in this journey, the key focus will always be the customer. To the greatest extent possible, we want to expand the scope of our self-service platforms to offer more personalized service to our customers. By doing so, we will address most of their concerns and enable them to access our services remotely thus reducing the need for physical interaction,” said Kenya Power’s Managing Director & CEO, Dr. (Eng.) Joseph Siror.
Currently, using the USSD Code *977# and Mypower App self-service platforms, customers can check their electricity bills and tokens, report power outages and other incidences, submit their meter reading for accurate billing as well as check the authenticity of persons presenting themselves as Company staff.
In the last year, the number of customers using the self-service platforms has surged to 2.1 million up from 1.7 million. Driven by this growth, the number of interactions on the USSD platform and Mypower App increased to 19.89 million and 15.76 million respectively. The increased usage of the digital platforms resulted in a 75% reduction in foot traffic to Company banking halls.
Riding on technology to enhance customer experience, the Company will also scale up the deployment of smart meters to strengthen metering and billing operations.
Currently, more than 8,000 commercial and industrial customers and 100,000 Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) customers are on smart metering. Smart meters allow customers to monitor their energy consumption on a real-time basis thus improving billing quality and customer satisfaction, among other benefits.
To further strengthen its capacity to receive and attend to customer complaints adequately, the Company has also increased the number of staff at its National Contact Centre by hiring 132 additional staff.