Smart Street customer engagement

Understanding whether customers were affected by the trials was crucial to the viability of the Smart Street solution.

Before the technology installation began, we launched a campaign to inform customers in the trial areas about the project. A customer focus group helped decide the best way to communicate information to the 67,000 customers served by the trial circuits. We then issued an information leaflet to customers and subsequently contacted around 1,500 customers who live close to any new equipment installed as part of the project.

We also committed to contact vulnerable customers on our Priority Services Register, by telephone and by our normal written procedures, if their home would be affected by unavoidable planned outages to install equipment. This proactive approach was designed to manage the specific needs of individual customers. However, because of the careful design of the installation programme, we were able to install all technologies without any need to interrupt customers’ supplies.  

In the latter stages of the campaign, we held a series of focus groups to collect qualitative information from customers to understand whether they observed any changes in their electricity supply as a result of the trials. All the customers who took part in our focus groups confirmed that they didn't notice any changes.

Our findings from the customer engagement workstream can be found below.