How Energy Queensland is Providing a Customer-First Equitable Approach to Digital Connectivity and Accessibility

Energy Queensland energises Queensland communities from the Tweed River to Torres Strait – a distance equivalent to that of London to Istanbul and serves 2.4 million customers spanning major cities as well as over 30 isolated regions. With a massive and diverse customer base spread across a vast expanse, ensuring the needs of all customers are met is a huge challenge.   

As Energy Queensland transforms and modernises its operations, it does so with customer-centricity as its compass. This journey involves pioneering projects and transformative initiatives to amplify customer trust, integrating AI technology to streamline interactions, and collaborating with communities to ensure that Energy Queensland is delivering the services their customer need and want. 

Michael Dart, the Executive General Manager - Customer, takes the helm of steering customer-centric endeavours at Energy Queensland. Michael shares details of how Energy Queensland is harnessing customer feedback to build trust, inform decision making and overcome barriers, as well as delving into how customer, government and community priorities are shaping future projects.   

In the contemporary landscape, where technology intertwines with every facet of life, Energy Queensland has committed itself to the transformative journey of redefining customer experiences. At the heart of this initiative lies the mission to deliver superior customer experiences through equitable, accessible, and trusted digital services.

As Energy Queensland endeavours to enhance customer experiences, it faces the reality that not all customers are created equal. Diverse factors such as geographic location, socio-economic status, and technological access create varying degrees of engagement readiness. This diversity of customers introduces the challenge of ensuring that the benefits of digitisation and enhanced services are accessible to all.  

Fuelled by a commitment to aligning with customer, government, and community priorities, Energy Queensland strives to ensure that every customer, irrespective of their background or circumstance, can seamlessly access, manage and navigate their energy service requirements. As Michael notes; “we find there's significant diversity and, in Queensland, there's not just diversity in terms of where people live, but also around social equity, the types of work people do, and whether they even have digital connectivity and coverage out there across regional Queensland.”  

To address this challenge, Energy Queensland employs a multifaceted strategy encompassing tailored touchpoints and service solutions that cater to each customer's unique needs. This approach underscores the commitment to ensuring that no customer is left behind in the pursuit of an energy-efficient future.    

“Knowing your customer sets you free,” says Michael. “There’s certainly a flight to digital solutions. But we don’t want to be digital for digital sake... I wouldn't say we have a digital first policy, but in anything we can have digital, we do.   

Crucially though we make sure that we don't leave anybody behind. We understand that everybody is at different capacity in terms of their ability to engage digitally with us. So, we help our customers through that, but always acknowledge that there are customers that might want a paper bill or to talk to somebody. So absolutely we're investing more and more in digital platforms and programmes, but it's critical that we don't leave anybody behind.”    

Citizen expectations towards government services started to see a massive shift pre-pandemic, driven by B2C digital juggernauts like Netflix, Amazon and Spotify.   

Many agencies had already realised the benefits of delivering digital-first citizen-centric services - not just for the citizens themselves, but for their staff, for productivity levels, and for their bottom-line, and refocused their efforts. However, government entities operate within a unique environment, characterised by a myriad of competing priorities. Unlike their private sector counterparts, governmental institutions must balance the diverse needs of their citizens, address societal issues, and adhere to strict regulations, all while striving to meet rising expectations for digital service delivery.  

Energy Queensland is no different. Currently undergoing a regulatory reset, Energy Queensland is engaged in consultations and approvals with their customer cohort to ensure their acceptance of outlined expenditures. As Michael explains; “with all of our ICT programmes we go to groups of customers and say ‘this is what we want to do - are you happy if we do these programmes?’ and if they're not, then have trade off discussions with them around what that means and how it impacts other projects that they do want.”   

“With the new software, what happens is you have the same group of agents that will do all the work for you - it becomes a one stop digital shop for every customer. ” - Michael Dart

Transformation then is not undertaken in isolation but rather with the voice of the customer first. Transformation initiatives then need to also be in harmony with government priorities as well as community needs.   

Currently there are two major approved projects in the pipeline.  

Rolled out in mid-2023 750,000 customers were onboarded to a new digital platform that revolutionises how Energy Queensland engaged with customer on the retail front. As Michael explains; “with the new software, what happens is you have the same group of agents that will do all the work for you - it becomes a one stop digital shop for every customer.  

Customers don’t get handed over to different people - all their issues can be handled by one person. Our agents are nominated cohorts of customers instead of being a specialist in one area – hardship, move in/move out etc. This is excellent for the customer because they're most likely to get involved with agents that they’re more familiar with, and it’s particularly helpful for those that are not as digitally savvy.” 

From an employee perspective Energy Queensland have also seen benefits for their teams. “It also provides our staff with more engaging and diverse work as they get to solve multiple types of customer problems in a day. Team members’ work is becoming more multi-dimensional as opposed to specialised in one business area we’re seeing greater employee engagement.   

This is really setting us strategically for the future and will better meet our customers’ needs which are changing rapidly as part of the energy transition. We are targeting mid 2024 for migration of most of our customers (residential & business) to be completed,” says Michael.  

The second project, due to be rolled out in October 2023 involves harnessing data technologies to help streamline our service delivery by predicting what customers might want. “Within our network business contact centres we’re about to move to an Amazon Web Services platform that provides the opportunity for more self-service and the ability to utilise AI in the future to predict what our customers want through our web platforms. The future enablement of these predictive tools will help us understand what our customers might want and equally to be able to service them in the least possible time.” 

Energy Queensland's narrative unfolds with innovation, accessibility, and empowerment as its core themes. It's a journey shaped by a commitment to understanding customers, delivering value, and simplifying experiences. The only way to achieve all this though is through trust. 

Citizen satisfaction hinges on trust and advocacy for government service delivery. Research shows that exceeding, meeting, or falling short of expectations shapes satisfaction and trust levels. Rising citizen expectations, driven by increased connectivity and empowerment, heighten the need for governments to meet these expectations. Failure to do so erodes trust. Which is why Energy Queensland has prioritised trust with a series of metrics.   

“Trust meanders into town on a tricycle, but it leaves in a Formula One Ferrari,” says Michael. “So, it's crucial for trust to be at the centre of everything we do. So, we measure that as well... with a Net Trust Score that works alongside our CSAT (customer satisfaction). All this is then underpinned by a voice of the customer programme that provides verbatim comments back to our business about the service interactions.”  

“Trust meanders into town on a tricycle, but it leaves in a Formula One Ferrari,” - Michael Dart

This information is all mined to generate insight into the channels and services that Energy Queensland customers want and to inform digital program investment – whether that be a chatbot or website modifications. This collaborative approach ensures services are co-created with those they serve. Trust becomes the bridge between service provider and recipient, guiding innovation driven by genuine needs.  

“Too many businesses make the same mistake. There is nothing more soul destroying than presuming what your customers want, only to meet with them and discover its the complete opposite,” says Michael. “We’re not here to make assumptions. We know what we want to achieve – better customer satisfaction scores - and to do that we need to work with our customers.”  

From there Queensland Energy hopes not just to optimise customer experience, but employee experience at the same time. “No one likes grumpy customers. Our people want to provide a fantastic experience for our customers and in turn we can help provide a fantastic experience for our employees too.”   

Keen to hear more?   

Watch Michael's entire keynote presentation from the recent Innovate Queensland Showcase here to deep dive into Energy Queensland's CX focused Transformations.