We are making long-term investments in training our people and improving our digital engagement, all aimed at creating a better customer experience.
Highlights
- 70% More than 70% of visits to britishgas.co.uk are now from mobile devices
- £8.6m Invested in apprentice and engineer training
- 11,000 Engineers and apprentices in the UK
We want to create better digital experiences, because our customers want and expect us to. Webchat means we can respond to customers’ online queries more quickly and at a time convenient to them. Our British Gas Chatbot allows customers to seek help or book smart meter appointments without needing to call us up.
They can also now interact with British Gas by using voice commands through Amazon Alexa. Our energy insight platforms – My Energy Live in the UK and Direct Your Energy in the US – help customers who have smart meters to gain greater insights into their energy use with just a few taps on their smartphone. We are currently trialling our next generation app, for roll-out later this year, which will include a range of enhanced functions, including tailored insights and alerts to help give customers more control over their spending.
We are making long-term investments in our engineers’ capabilities and tools so they are better equipped to serve our customers. In 2017, we invested £8.6 million in training and developing the skills of our 11,000 strong UK network of engineers and apprentices. Together, they completed over 385,000 hours of training last year. This equates to nearly one week per year for each engineer and will help them deliver a better customer experience across our full range of products and services – from boiler repairs to Connected Home devices.
We are also investing in technology so our engineers and technicians have the right tools at their fingertips. We have provided our engineers with smartphones so they can work more easily on the go. Our labs continue to develop new technologies and in 2017, we enhanced our diagnostic tool, XSOL, improving its ability to identify problems. It now provides our engineers with full diagnostic information across nearly 1,000 different types of boilers enabling us to reduce the time taken to fix our customers’ boilers by 8%.