Published on August 23, 2023
Key Business Challenges
Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (Tata Power-DDL) is a joint venture between Tata Power and the Government of NCT of Delhi with the majority stake being held by Tata Power Company (51%). Tata Power-DDL distributes electricity in North and North-West Delhi with a license spanning over a period of 25 years.
Tata Power-DDL seemingly has a monopoly in the area and is committed to provide customers with responsive, best-in-class customer service and experience. There are robust systems in place to provide non-stop, reliable supply of power and an efficient revenue cycle management.
Being a mature company in its Business Excellence journey and having adopted the TQM philosophy, it already had robust processes for its daily operations management. Leading the sector as a proactive customer-oriented organisation, several customer-focused initiatives were in place, and attempts were constantly made to go beyond regulatory expectations to deliver quicker TATs to customers. Several CFTs also existed for continuous improvement projects across the organisation. Gearing up to become the ‘Utility of Future’, Tata Power-DDL aspires to lead on sustainability and develop innovative services to enable its customers with energy-saving solutions among others.
Expectations from the Engagement
This study was designed to challenge existing methods and paradigms, so as to enable Tata Power-DDL to reach its aspiration to become the ‘Utility of Future’ and build the foundation for a superior customer experience, in spite of being a monopoly in its operating area. The senior management of Tata Power-DDL wanted to understand the following parameters through the diagnostic:
- Address changing customer expectations – value added services
- Creating value for segmented customers (through digital journeys)
- Responsiveness and communication with customers
- Proactively anticipating and reducing customer issues
- Consistent process execution across all touchpoints through capability of frontline staff
Hence, TBExG designed the Deep Dive in two phases.
- Phase 1 - To assess the current VoC processes and identify opportunities for systematic use of VoC for product/service improvements.
- Phase 2 - Review existing customer experience delivered by Tata Power-DDL across various touchpoints.
TBExG also facilitated the customer journey mapping exercise for retail customers as a starting point to map the customer experience. The study included speaking to various employee groups and business associates, discussions with customer care, line men, meter installation teams, site visit officers, bill distribution teams along with a customised customer centricity survey for Tata Power-DDL employees and business associates. The survey covered about 513 employees and 420 business associates.
These conversations led to a deeper understanding of the on-ground challenges, which helped to understand the pain areas of customers which were gathered separately through a qualitative VoC through agency interviews with customers.
Outputs and Insights from the Programme
While the company’s VoC management system was systematic and has been able to drive improvements across the organisation, the study validated many approaches that Tata Power-DDL has designed and threw up opportunities to further automate its system to ensure loop closure on customer voices being captured. Opportunities to aid management by facts through real time dashboards and provide insights to respective process owners based on selective Best Practices from Tata Play on NPS and call centre experience were recommended by TBExG.
On the customer experience delivery, while most touchpoints pointed towards satisfactory experience, recommendations were provided to senior management to strengthen the new connection process and mechanisms to provide support to customers to facilitate online application.
A key recommendation was that deeper segmentation for retail customers specifically would help Tata Power-DDL design segmented processes such as new connection process, value added services, communication and engagement with its varied sets of customers.
Several global Best Practices were shared with SLT, focused segmentation enabled VAS targeting, and other customer experience drivers such as billing, new connection application and digital engagement.
Charting the Next Course & KPI Impact
The senior leadership found the study insightful and some of the learnings taken forward include using an automated platform for keeping track of Net Promoter Score (NPS) & Customer Effort Score (CES), improving its access mechanisms, and regrouping internal systems to reduce TAT.
Post deployment of these initiatives, Tata Power-DDL have received positive feedback from customers and about 5-point increase in its Top Box Score in the annual customer delight survey conducted in Q4 of FY23.
EDGE Impact stories highlight the positive transformations accomplished by Tata companies in their business processes through interventions such as deep dive diagnostics and best practice implementations, in collaboration with Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG).
Verbatim
While we have undertaken multiple initiatives, the Deep Dive study conducted by the TBExG team has been like a mirror to us and has helped us in understanding what the stakeholders really think about our customer centricity.
The culture study has helped unearth many hidden aspects which normally do not come up during reviews and surveys. The depth and breadth of the study have been impressive. The team has gone above and beyond in collecting and analysing data, conducting interviews, and researching relevant industry trends. The comprehensive nature of the study ensures that we have a holistic understanding of the subject matter. The sharing of learnings from other companies by TBExG, have also enabled us to think about our processes from a different perspective. I am particularly impressed with the team's ability to identify key areas of improvement and present actionable recommendations.