By Richard Court, Head of Regulations and Affairs, Cadent
Listening to your customers has never been more important for businesses and it is no different for Cadent. Cadent’s gas networks serve 11 million homes, schools, hospitals, offices and businesses covering nearly every demographic of society. Heating and cooking enabled by this gas supply is an essential for everyday living, an essential that you just can’t do without. So, is it vitally important we listen to our customers and stakeholders to ensure we are delivering the services they want in the most effective way.
We recently held a number of domestic customer engagement workshops across our networks to explain our role and activities and listen to what our customers want and expect from us, to find out what they consider to be their priority for the service Cadent provides to them. The results of these workshops will help us mould our business to our customers’ needs across our footprint from Cumbria to Ipswich and across our major cities.
Our name is still new and people did not necessarily understand who Cadent are or what our role is within the gas industry. This was a great chance to explain that our role is transporting gas safely and reliably through the pipes to homes, offices and industry. We also provide the gas emergency service and support our local communities through actions such as helping to providing discounted connections to people in fuel poverty. It was also a chance to discuss the future role of gas and how the network can play a critical role in helping the country meet its climate change targets in the lowest cost and most secure way.
There was a diverse representation of our domestic customers at the workshops and great engagement and insight from the attendees with a lot of interest in all the areas covered. It was clear from the workshops that people do not worry about how they get gas to their homes. It was just taken for granted that gas will arrive safely and reliably to heat their homes and be there to cook with. We sensed a real desire for better communication from us of explaining our role, advertising better what we do and offer and making it as easy as possible to work with us.
We know this is only the beginning of many future conversations as we look to build our future plans and improve our service today. We have established an independent Customer Engagement Group to help challenge us on how we are gaining the insights from our customers and how we are using this insight to shape our business. Through our customer engagement we are aiming for better outcomes for all our customers in every region and every walk of life.
Join us on this journey and find out more about how we are engaging with our customers and keep up to date with progress on https://cadentgas.com/about-us/regulation/riio