The Customer Is Always Right Power to the People

We take electricity for granted...

Most people just think that electricity

comes from a cable in the ground to your house and that's it.

..and never give a second thought to how it's made.

The flames are nice and bright and bushy.

But behind the scenes,

our power companies are struggling to keep the lights on.

MACHINERY BEEPS

National Grid want their energy now,

we can't afford to miss that instruction.

This winter we could face blackouts.

You can't say, "I'm sorry, you'll have to turn your fridge off."

It's a fire at a coal-powered fire station.

Power stations we've relied on for 50 years are coming down.

But bills and profits have gone up.

How can these profits be fair

when the people cannot afford to pay for their energy?

The energy giants are under fire from all sides.

People hate you. Let's be honest, they don't like you guys, right?

I've been told to go hang myself by a customer.

I'm trying to help you, sir. Hello?

Now one of country's biggest, SSE, has let the cameras in.

Filmed over one critical year...

Basically if we don't generate enough, the lights will go out.

..this is a surprising story of a hidden world.

Voila, une turbine.

-As an army of workers...

-Good morning.

..battle to keep our power flowing.

We need to make a saving of half a million pounds.

Where?

Hello, you're through to Lewis.

-Get this bloody meter out my garden.

-This time...

Morning, we've got lots of customers waiting to speak to us.

..the story of a company fighting to improve its image.

We've been trying to sort of get much more proactive in trying

to make consumers re-engage in energy.

-From preventing power cuts...

-How long do we reckon?

-Three or four hours.

-Jesus.

-..to customer service.

I don't like being treated like an idiot and a fool.

Our job in this company is - how can we show customers

we want to do better?

But can the company turn its reputation around?

What does amazing look like? What does brilliant look like?

Right, I'm trying to help you, sir. Hello?

Thank you for calling SSE Swalec.

To help us connect your call as quickly as possible,

please press the star key on your phone twice.

Five million of us buy our power from SSE,

one of the big six energy companies.

The only loose change is if your prices have gone up.

-Yeah.

-It's very poor customer service.

-And I totally agree.

The poorest I have ever seen.

Most people that phone up, they're calling because they have a problem.

In 2014 the company made profits of £1.5 billion.

Hello?

What does the invoice state?

Notice of electricity disconnection.

They also lost 370,000 customers.

You can't please everyone, can you?

We're the bad guys because our prices are too high or we're

not doing enough and this, that and the other.

It should go back to zero but it doesn't.

I would never dream of speaking to somebody

the way that we get spoken to.

Do you know what? I've not hung up, right?

I didn't feel like I wanted to give yous it because yous have took

the piss out of us and I felt like you were bumping us.

One of the biggest sources of complaint...

I'm sorry to hear that, when did it go off?

..is power cuts but SSE is fighting back.

In the battle for the hearts and minds of its customers,

this is the new front-line.

That one can be extended straight up onto it.

We've got some poles still on the system, 1930s, and that's

incredible, really. You know it's an old pole when it's older than you.

Linesmen are key to keeping the lights on this winter.

Kevin Wade has been doing the job for 36 years.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Never have taken a shock, have you?

Have we all had a...?

-Yes, we've all had little shocks.

-Have you?

-At times, yeah.

I mean, if you're up in the air, you can survive a 241...

but 11,000, no, you'd be very lucky.

You get the shock and it knocks you off the pole

and the person could look quite fine but when you take them

to hospital the first thing they would say to the people is,

"Get the relatives in," because it's like a microwave.

When you get 11,000, it cooks you from the inside out.

A prime example is a squirrel. So they come down and they look

all right and then you go and see them about ten, 15 minutes later

and all the skin's starting to bubble up where the blood

is boiling inside, yeah.

And when they go pop, it's a horrible smell.

While all big six energy companies sell power,

SSE is the only one that also delivers it.

It has a separate distribution business responsible for

managing the power lines in Scotland and parts of southern England.

Down here we've got the big houses, we've got the merchant bankers

and they're not used to seeing power cuts

and they just expect a 100% supply. Well, I'm sorry, but

if you move into the country, you're not going to get a 100% supply.

It doesn't matter how we do it, it's...

Storms are always against us.

'December was one of the stormiest periods in decades, hundreds of

'thousands of households were without power

'over the key festive period.'

Christmas 2013 we had 65mph winds,

there were hundreds of thousands of customers lost power then.

No matter what the conditions, power cuts are bad publicity.

'Falling trees and flying debris played havoc with

'the electricity network.'

When it first hit, we were getting fault after fault after fault

literally every second. It was quite hard. And then when they stood down

the engineers because it was too unsafe for them to work,

having to say that to people that we weren't going to coming back

out till the morning when it was safer, it was awful, really awful.

'It was one of the stormiest periods in decades which left hundreds

'of thousands of households without power over the festive season.'

The great storm of 2013 won't be forgotten quickly by those affected.

We'd just started to open our Christmas presents

and the lights went out.

So many people were off, there was a swathe of people off.

No indication when it was going to come on, absolutely nothing,

the communication was terrible.

The company was heavily criticised for its handling of the crisis

and questioned in Parliament about its response.

£27 for customers who were without power for 48 hours,

it's an absolute pittance.

This year, the company is desperate to avoid more damage

to its reputation.

Come on, keep coming, keep coming.

So in a bid to keep the lights on, Kevin and the linesmen

are now replacing power lines dating back decades.

The span of overhead line going down through here is going to be

removed, so what they're doing is they're attaching stay rods with

stays, an anchor point, so that the weight of the line going that

way can be supported whilst they drop the overhead line down.

-Oh, I see.

-Yeah.

-So it's jolly good.

Better get the candles out, then.

No, no, you won't be going off, sir.

We don't want this one on the full tension, do we?

No, you don't, but you don't want... Yeah, all right,

-as long as you're happy with that come-along...

-What?

You've got to wait, if you distance drop...

-You're all on via backfeeds now.

-Are you sure?

Yeah, I hope so. You should be, anyway.

But if you have any problems, there's an emergency number

on the side of the van.

Well, they won't answer, anyway. Thanks for your information.

That's all right, have a good day sir.

Right, stop traffic while we cut just in case. Stop.

Right, coming down.

All right, you on? That's all the new stays on. Yeah, that's good.

You can open it now, mate, yeah.

Down we go for dinner. Phew!

Preventing power cuts would go some way to restoring public confidence

in the company but, in the battle to

rebuild its reputation, there's a lot of ground to make up.

'Energy companies were today hauled before MPs

'and one was immediately in the firing line.'

Can you tell us exactly when SSE stopped mis-selling?

'Earlier this month, SSE was fined over £10 million

'for mis-selling, including using misleading language to

'customers on their doorstep.'

It was ultimately decided that there were inappropriate elements

within that script, we changed that script.

Illegal elements, not inappropriate.

Illegal and misleading.

The mis-selling scandal of 2013 was hugely damaging for the company.

The man in the firing line was its chief executive,

Alistair Phillips-Davies.

Because I've got a double-barrelled name,

people just think I'm posh but I went to a comprehensive in Derby,

so I don't know how posh that is, really.

Alistair has a plan to rebuild the company's image

and he needs his troops onside.

-These guys have been desperate to meet you.

-Really? Crikey Moses.

Yes, you're a celebrity.

Last year, Alistair earned £2.3 million.

We want to know what you do in your spare time when you're not working.

-I'm never not working.

-THEY CHUCKLE

No, bit boring. I like playing golf but

I quite like cooking as well, you know, monk fish and stuff like that.

I don't know, last night I did lemon chicken with spinach.

-Sounds lovely.

-Tania will be down your house, looking for an invite.

He's hoping that a glimpse into the boss's world will give

staff morale a much needed boost.

Whereabouts are you based?

I'll be in London, Cardiff, Havant, you know, all the various places.

Go to America, you know, something like that. Bill Gates has invited

me to something in May, so I'll go to Microsoft and see Bill Gates.

I had dinner at his house last year, which was quite interesting.

What's that like?

It's big, his house is probably about the size of this office,

actually, it's 66,000 square feet but he's quite a modest, shy guy,

actually. They're just normal people a lot of them, just like anybody.

The thing is, I'm just a normal person. I went to school,

did my exams, grew up, all of you should aspire to do the same thing.

Over the last year, Alistair has seen the company lose

hundreds of thousands of customers amid now-familiar

accusations of fast practices and fat-cat profits.

He's entrusted a makeover of the company to

one of his loyal lieutenants.

So now I'm going to have a sneaky piece of chocolate.

And the man in charge of giving the business a new image is

head of retail, Will Morris.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Why do you think it's the energy sector

that people sort of pick on?

There is a requirement within our...political system, I think.

To an extent, for the bad guy, I think the energy companies

are, you know... The rhetoric... To be fair to consumers, if you hear,

"MultiGen's talking about rip-off energy companies,"

and this and that, I mean, it's not surprising

people have that perception.

All right, cheers.

As a former marketing manager at Disneyworld, Will's brief is

to sprinkle a little fairy dust over the company's public image.

I remember when I took the job, one concern - it might be a bit

quiet and dull compared to the fun and games of the hotels of Disney

and, of course, little did I know that I would find myself in front

of a select committee and all of their sort of abuse and stuff

less than a year later. So one thing it has not been is dull.

A key part of Will's job is defending

the company against its many critics.

How can these profits be fair

when the people cannot afford to pay for their energy?

The reason it's fair is because, if I don't make

a 5% profit in my business, I can't afford to continue

employing my 20,000 people, which are equally members of our society

in Britain, and I can't actually afford to operate the company.

It's less than supermarkets make, it's a fraction

of what mobile-phone companies make.

Now Will's decided to go on the offensive.

He's going to discuss the launch of his big new idea to make us

think differently about energy and his employers.

We are a utility but, for years and years and years, we've communicated

gas hob burning and a fire and, actually,

it's pretty dull, right?

# When I fall in love

# It will be forever... #

The problem for Will is that energy companies all have

an identical product, so he needs to find an ingenious way

to help his stand out from the crowd.

The campaign which broke on Saturday on X Factor is principally

designed to engage with customers for the very first time.

We could have done that a number of different ways.

We could have done it through a child, we could have done it through

some sort of alien but we chose to do it through an orang-utan

and the reason we did that was because

they are incredibly human, incredible wisdom

and beauty and we felt that, actually, our lead, our character,

Maya, could actually convey, through her eyes and through her fascination

and discovery of energy for the very first time, the story of energy.

We've been trying to sort of get much more proactive through

the orang-utan and Maya, which are trying to make consumers

re-engage in energy, make them

much more sort of aware, I suppose, of the fun it brings to our lives.

With a recent poll showing energy companies less popular than

bankers and estate agents, it's a bold strategy for Will.

The way most of us think about energy

is a little more down to earth.

Hello, you're speaking to Kerry, how can I help?

This is the company's customer service call centre in Havant.

OK, have you got a new tenant in now?

Last year it dealt with almost 160,000 complaints

about customer service and bills.

What would you like me to do for you today as a resolution, then?

Get this bloody meter out of my garden, right?

Because it's absolutely taking the piss out of us, like.

-OK, right.

-This is just time wasted for me.

Despite freezing its prices in March 2014,

an SSE customer's average household bill is £1,260 a year.

It's just ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.

Staff here have the unenviable job of explaining to customers

why their bills are so high.

I'm actually not going to pay Southern Energy

for Southern Electric not doing what they're supposed to do.

I can hear that you're very unhappy with the service

and I am really sorry about that.

I had to get a really awkward one, didn't I?

Right.

Hello, all. If you're worried, straight to me, is that all right?

Lovely.

As head of call centres, it's Tracey Costley's job to ensure

disgruntled customers don't decide to leave the company.

To do that, she has to make sure her call operators stick to the script.

I'm here to make sure they've got everything

they need to look after a customer.

On the February tariff,

you get that lower gas price as of the day that you sign up for it.

The energy companies say their bills are high

because, over the past decade, wholesale fuel prices have

risen and they have to pay levies to Government.

-Morning all.

-Morning.

But many staff still struggle to deliver the company line.

What can we do in terms of communication, then,

to help you help customers more?

There's loads and loads of stuff in the media,

-do you need more around that?

-Yeah, I mean, when we get

asked about why we aren't cheaper, we're just kind of like,

"Well, that's just how it is." I think maybe if we had a better

idea of where it came from, then we could explain it better to

the customers because, at the moment, like,

I explain it as, "Well we do a lot of renewable energy

"and that's why the price is slightly different to

"other companies, because of the green levies."

But if we had a better idea behind it then maybe that would....

-So more, more...?

-More information to give to the customers.

They ask, "Why is it that the gas wholesale price is down,

"why aren't our prices down?"

But I have no idea what the gas wholesale price is

and then they'll say "Your company's made XX amount of money this year,

"don't you think that's too much money you've made?" Asking my opinion on it

and I don't really want to give my opinion because I have no idea

if that is a lot of money for a company to make or not.

Thank you very much, I'll be taking some of this away.

It's been very helpful, guys, thank you very much indeed.

Thank you, have a good day, go enjoy, thank you.

For Tracey, it's all about customer service...

..to make consumers feel they're being well looked after

and that the prices they're paying are fair.

It's really hard when you read the media when they go,

"These companies are villains."

We're villains, right? Big fat cats and our job

in this company is - how can we show customers we want to do better?

We're on that mission.

But Tracey isn't the only one who believes it's not prices

that are the problem, it's how they're explained.

Shall we take our seats, ladies and gentlemen?

Back in London, Will has convened a meeting of gurus

from across the sector to discuss his latest idea - redesigning

the hated energy bill to make it more palatable for customers.

If you open a document and you have a six-page document

and it's important, it's a lot of money you're spending

and you don't understand it, then that lack of comprehension

very quickly translates to mistrust, no-one likes to feel stupid.

Jason Wakeford from uSwitch,

the people I was speaking to are really struggling themselves to find

various bits that were needed for the comparison on bills

and, you know, these are guys and girls

who are dealing with this on a daily basis.

If people don't understand their bill,

it's a major turn-off to the whole engagement in energy, so that's

everything from paying less, using less, to wasting less. So cracking

this one is, I think, going to be a real big win on all three fronts.

Redesigning your bill is...has got some amazing opportunities.

I was involved with Vodafone a few years ago. When Vodafone completely

redesigned its bill, it saved them £5 million worth of paper

every year because they discovered that they were communicating

far too much in far too voluminous a way

but, most importantly, it saved

them something like 90% of calls to the call centre post bill going out.

I think, really, the question I want to ask out of this entire

exercise is - what does amazing look like?

You know, what does brilliant look like? Because, actually,

that, for me, would be right back to the beginning

of my point, you know, to build trust and confidence.

-INTERVIEWER:

-How was this morning for you, then?

I thought it was really good, actually. It was quite... It is

to do with the challenges. When you do get everyone together,

which is quite challenging in itself, you get a very high quality

conversation. I felt they gave us a good mandate to go ahead and do

the work on getting those bills much simpler and clearer for customers.

But do you think that's because they don't like the way it's designed...

I think a lot of things.

..or they just simply don't like those figures down the bottom?

I think... No, I think it is... I mean, people aren't stupid,

they understand that, obviously,

there's a cost to consuming their utilities.

But no matter how amazing a bill might look,

it doesn't mean the customer can afford to pay it.

Good afternoon, you're through to Charlotte, how can I help?

So we've got the income support, the housing benefit,

council-tax benefit, DLA for your son and the carer's allowance,

child benefit, child tax.

If you are struggling to make those payments, just contact us.

I haven't asked you what kind of job you do, sir.

I'm only trying to help you. Obviously, to try

and arrange something to prevent the thing going further.

In 2014 with austerity biting, SSE was owed more than £100 million

in overdue bills by its customers.

The excuses that people come out with to pay their bills is...

SHE LAUGHS

There's so many.

-INTERVIEWER:

-What sort of thing?

Erm...some of them can be, "I'm saving for a holiday."

Some of them are vet bills.

That's not...that's not the payment plan, sir, that's you saying

you'll pay £20 a week, OK? That's not a payment plan.

I deal with elderly people that come through

and can't even afford to put their heating on because they don't

get enough, they're not entitled to pension credit, they only get

their state pension and it's heartbreaking for me to sit here

and demand that, "You need to pay this,"

and I can't do anything for them.

And if my nan was in that position,

you know, I don't think I would appreciate it.

Right, I'm trying to help you, sir.

Hello?

Hello, sir?

If customers persistently fall behind with bills

and don't answer letters, they could get a visit.

Sometimes, when you go into somebody's house, maybe

they haven't seen anybody for days and some of these people,

especially older people, they're glad to see me.

John Samuels is a collections officer in Newport.

It's not like it was in the old days whereby, straight in,

cut them off and bye-bye.

I'm not like a thug or anything, I say, "We are here to help you,"

and then, once they know that we're there to help them,

they seem to sort of calm right down. They sometimes ask me

for a cup of tea. Sometimes I'll have a quick one

but if not I'll just say, "I'm sorry I haven't got any time for tea,

"I just want to sort your bill out for you."

He's calling on customers who've fallen behind on their bills

to work out a payment plan.

Always best to turn your van around for the exit out

in case anything happens.

You never know, there could be a dog lurking behind the door.

I keep my hand on my dog spray.

Give it a quick spray.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Does it work?

It does work, the dog is being sick, he's going to the toilet,

he's doing a... Any orifice, it just comes out everywhere, everywhere.

-CHILD:

-Hello?

-Hello, Swalec.

-My mum's just in the bath.

Can you open this main door, so I can leave your mother a letter

if she's busy at the moment?

If customers don't answer the door,

they're advised by letter to get in touch.

-There we are.

-Thank you.

-OK.

See how that goes now.

And we're off.

My name is John, I'm calling from SSE Swalec.

Erm...

Well, I don't know what they've done here, it's like Fort Knox.

People are more reluctant to pay,

I suspect they want to keep up with the Joneses.

-Is it Lyndsey?

-It is, yes.

Yeah, I'm here to talk about your outstanding electricity account.

Right, OK.

-649.

-Ooh... I thought I had it coming out on direct debit.

Lyndsey Jones has accidentally let her direct debit lapse.

The last payment we received was back in February

Lyndsey has been on the company's standard variable tariff

for three years.

-£100, can you pay that?

-I have cash.

That should be OK, £100 cash. If I can also read the meter,

if you don't mind?

70% of all energy customers could get cheaper deals

by switching suppliers.

Perhaps they should do a bit more advertising,

actually make it more widely known to their customers that there

are more affordable ways to pay for it rather than putting them on

a tariff that makes them more money rather than benefit their customers.

-INTERVIEWER:

-70% of customers are on the highest rate, aren't they?

What do you put that down to?

They can't be bothered to be on the phone because it takes

a long time to get through to a supplier and this is what

they don't want, so they'd rather pay more and stay where they are.

I think I can go home. You've had a good day's work out of me today.

A quarter of our bill goes on paying for and maintaining the lines

and wires bringing power to our homes.

When they fail, as in the storms of 2013, it can be

a public-relations disaster.

Good morning, you're through to Alex

at Southern Electric Power Distribution,

how can I help?

It's a problem the company must take seriously.

We did have their network, about 15 minutes ago,

switch off and then back on again.

Do you know how long this is going to be? Because we've got teenage

daughters and we're all going off in different directions

but, obviously, if somebody's... I can make sure somebody will be here.

OK, well, we will call you within the hour.

There are two entire call centres dedicated to

people who've lost power.

-OK.

-All right, then, thank you.

-Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye.

They'll be having a meltdown because they can't use their...

all their technology.

Have I gone down the right one?

I think so.

As well as the call centres,

customer-liaison managers like Andy Griffiths are sent out

to those worst affected to smooth ruffled feathers.

They're not... They're definitely not in yet.

These are the customers who are affected by the outage today?

Yeah, they've had so... Yeah, they're affected by the outage today

and they've had, historically, so many issues...

and whenever there is an outage, I do like to pop in and check.

We had one after another after another

after another power cut and no-one's telling you when it's coming back

on again and we've got all the men working and all these stories but...

But they seem to be addressing it now, to be fair,

and I think they seem to be on top of it or...

Well, they had to, didn't they?

Keeping you in the loop when things go wrong, at least.

Although residents can't choose who manages their network,

keeping customers happy here is part of a wider public-relations battle.

I'm not allowed to speak the truth, I don't think.

Oh, no, you are, Jane. Oh, you absolutely are,

this isn't...propaganda.

I mean, if you go back to... I mean...

Oh, the Christmas... Not this Christmas gone, the one before.

-..was horrendous, I can't...

-All the time.

-That was horrendous.

The whole... I think we were off for five days, over... The day

before Christmas Eve, so I've got all my shopping in,

it was horrendous.

And this is cos trees were going down in the wind, is that right?

Yes, we had a very bad storm, there was

one across the road, wasn't there?

-But, in fairness...in fairness to Jane...

-We were off five days.

..the sort of comment that I've had thrown at me

is, in many ways, people like Jane forgave us Christmas because it

was a storm of the century, a storm-storm-storm,

it's the 16 other offences

they'd like taken into consideration, is that fair?

It was that.

It was just one after another after another after another.

All caused by the same thing?

Yeah, trees, trees coming down here.

The solution, to fell trees near the power lines,

is almost as unpopular with the locals as the cuts themselves.

Have you seen where they've cut the...? Or, rather, butchered.

I have...well, show me what you mean.

I'd like to see quite what you mean, yeah.

-I'll show you.

-Yeah.

I mean, I can see...

Would you like to get your camera in?

There's a slight cut in the back of the trees.

Let me get out of the way.

That was a totally overgrown full wood.

Why is it being cut to this extent?

Because of the 11,000 volt lines above - you see the lines?

And they don't want any fall on that.

Now, they've done it when there's no birds nesting, you see.

Yes, but the fox and the deer are not happy,

they're leaping back over where are our trees...

The fox was confused.

I can imagine. An overtired, confused fox...

-Whatever, whatever.

-OK.

He doesn't like fluorescent yellow.

The goal is to avoid a repeat of the problems of 2013,

so it's a race against time to get trees felled

before the bad weather hits.

If Andy is to succeed, he must persuade landowners

to give him access to their properties.

-INTERVIEWER:

-But this bit doesn't need cutting, where we are now?

Yeah, no, they are cutting beyond there,

but we'll let them know as we approach.

One local farmer has been particularly reluctant

to lose his trees.

You know, we need to get on his land

and it can all get very fraught, very tense.

How's you? Good to see you. Are you all right?

But today, Andy's charm offensive has been successful.

A bit of timber for you.

Yeah, well, thanks for that, a little bit of extra firewood.

First, the energy supply must be switched off.

It's 11,000 volts we're dealing with up there.

There's a safety locking device you'll see him operate first,

which comes down then the switch handle will be operated safely

from the ground with insulated rods.

Every switch on our network is uniquely numbered.

Just check the number again, 9831.

9831.

OK and your instruction is to open and apply isolation.

I'm the last farmer here, apart from one very nice fella up there.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Everybody else is from London, are they?

Well, they've got horses and drive around in large Range Rovers

with giant shades and do lunch and knock you over on your bike.

-INTERVIEWER:

-What happens when the power goes down?

Well, they just do lunch for slightly longer.

Hopefully, finally, we're getting to where we need to be.

A nice day for it, isn't it?

To be seeing this getting done is fantastic.

I'd like to have gonads the size of the guy up there, I tell you.

ANDY CHUCKLES

They're right monkeys, these guys, aren't they?

Yeah, it's probably one of the most skilled jobs that we've got,

you know, and the physics involved on those trees are...

Particularly in a fork condition

where a tree is brought down, equipment...

SAW REVS

MAN YELLS WARNING

I'm sort of quite emotional about it, cos it's...

Yeah, no, I can imagine, you know, I can imagine.

Can never say too much for your cooperation with this today,

-brilliant.

-No worries.

To see him today, really quite humbled by the work going on here,

it's been, yeah, quite remarkable and to walk with him just then,

you know, it's something he's been...

Almost never thought I'd see the day that we'd get the trees cleared

through here and to see him walking back up there now, it's...

Yeah, God bless him.

It's January 2015 and the dreaded winter weather has arrived.

The main concern is that intense rain and those really quite

powerful winds, which are likely to be disruptive.

Thank you for joining the session. This is the safety brief

to talk about the overnight arrangements for tonight.

A cyclone is predicted to strike Britain

in the early hours of January 14th.

Bindi, generation?

It's in place, the additional you requested,

so it's all there, ready to go.

The company needs to avoid the public relations disaster

of last winter.

I think there's a couple of things we're going to do quite different.

If we are dealing of wind speeds of around 65-70mph,

then that will dictate what actually physically happens

out on the network overnight, in terms of safety.

As Head of Operations, customers' welfare is Bev Keogh's top priority.

I know the majority of customers are sleeping,

but there still will be customers up and about that will need to

understand when that power is going to get restored.

It's just important that, tomorrow morning,

restoration is focused on the biggest number of customers

and we get those on as quickly as possible.

So thank you all very much and have a good...

Try and get a good rest tonight.

-INTERVIEWER:

-'What are you doing tonight?'

Well, what time is it now? So it's 7:40pm, so I'll go home

and I will try, on my Dryathalon January, to switch off.

Right, bring it on, we're all ready.

OK, night, night.

Early next morning, Bev and her team reassemble at HQ,

prepared for a busy day.

I mean, it was windy last night, though, wasn't it?

It blew my... I've got a problem with my bedroom window,

cos it's not catching.

Twice it goes, doosh! I was like, "Oh, my God!"

PHONE DIALS

-RECORDED VOICE:

-'You are entering the meeting.'

It's time to find out what the damage is across the network.

All right, now what I'd like to do is,

I want to do a region-by-region update.

Most worrying are the collapse of high voltage lines, or HVs,

which can cut off power to whole communities.

And Matt.

In Feltham, we've got four HVs with 400 customers off.

In Oxford, we've got no outstanding HVs.

OK, that's great. Thanks, Matt. Steve?

As we sit, we've got nine HVs currently with customers off supply.

-And numbers of customers?

-694 customers.

OK, thank you. OK, so it's a little bit different from what

we've done before, but this is...

If you remember, the feedback from customers from Christmas 2013 was,

"We don't want updates every three hours."

If a customer is going to be off for the majority of the day,

I want to really be brave and tell them that, so they can make

alternative arrangements and we can get the welfare out.

The focus is on restore and then repair.

Let's get these 2,300 customers back on as quickly as possible

and let's keep them informed about what's going on.

Good morning, you're through to Caroline

at Southern Electric Power Distribution, how can I help you?

It's a fault on our main network,

so it will be affecting you as well there.

I'm so sorry to cause an inconvenience

to your work day, Martin.

Officially, a loss of power becomes a power cut after three minutes...

It's obviously quite annoying.

Worst case, you're looking at four to six hours.

..at which point, Ofgem penalties start to kick in.

At the call centres, the lines are starting to buzz

and the clock is ticking.

We'll send out engineers to points on the network.

What I'll do is try and reset the network section by section.

Across the affected areas, engineers are mobilised.

Most people just think that electricity comes through a cable

in the ground to your house and that's it.

John Ivy is the linesmen team manager

covering this part of Hampshire and Sussex.

-INTERVIEWER:

-This is sort of badlands for electricity, isn't it?

Those 60mph gusts inland will cause us a problem,

but it's brought some lines down, so the guys have got to

put the lines back up.

There could be a lot of surface water where they're working,

this could prove difficult.

In most areas, electricity lines are looped so that power can be

delivered from other directions when a cable is down, but for these

rural customers on individual lines, there is simply no backup.

-SATNAV:

-'You have reached your destination on your right.'

There must be a padlock one there.

Midhurst in Sussex has already been off for nine hours.

Look, there's a tree on the line down there.

This will snap that there.

So once they've cut that, how long do we reckon?

-Three, four hours, probably.

-Jesus.

After the storms of 2013, the company paid £2.3 million

in compensation to customers who lost power.

-MOBILE RINGS

-They're going to be a few hours yet.

-Hello, John Ivy.

-'Hi, John, it's Peter.'

-Hi, Pete.

-'How you doing, you all right, mate?'

-Very well.

We've got a massive span here that dips down into like a valley.

One of the wires has snapped out of the joint, but it's...

You know the cross arms? It's twisted them on both poles

so that's the line free now.

John has to decide if it's worth the cost of a generator

to get customers power back on more quickly.

-In terms of the customer numbers off...

-'43 customers. yeah.'

43, so not all off of the same transformer?

-'No.'

-Oh, so how many trans...

Nine?

Oh, God, quite a few, then. OK, cheers, bye.

What you've got are 47 customers that are still off,

but they're fed from nine different transformers...

-MOBILE RINGS

-..so what you would have to do

is connect a generator to each nine...

Hi, Ross.

If Pete goes with the wire, he'll be able to see, won't he?

If Pete goes that way...

Do you need a bit more?

Leave it there.

Three, two, one.

Three, two, one.

Three, two, one.

He's got to do the same to that one down there, then, hasn't he?

Cos the cross arms... Cross arm on that one?

This one's not damaged, I'll change that one.

-Yeah.

-Ideally, I'd change all four, but...

This is the pressures that you're under, you're under pressure

with the time, you got to do the repair right,

otherwise it's just... You're going to have a problem later on.

The guys are up on the second pole now,

so this one's connected in and the cross arm's back, so they're

just going down to the second one now, so it'll be about two hours.

People just think it's just putting a wire back up.

You got to change the dishes, you got to put the cable back in,

you got to do... You know, it's not a five-minute job.

You'll come to one part and you'll say, "Oh, there's the damage,"

and you'll think you found it but you must continue walking the line

because there might be another one further down.

What we've done, we've climbed the hill there, see that switch,

that's where the emus are on guard.

Two, they've left on guard,

and they've just gone out for the day, it's quite amusing.

Ponies, emus... See, we get it all!

-Don't get that in west London, do you?

-No, no.

Good.

Well done, mate, superb. Well done, guys.

It's 2:00pm and Midhurst has got its power back.

John is keen to give the good news in person.

There's nobody in, but if you look through there,

the lights have come on, so they've got power.

Hi, Ross, John Ivy. That's all the customers back on now for Midhurst.

We've knocked on a couple of doors and spoke to the customers.

It's all back on. Thank you.

Across the region,

the linesmen have got the power back on in record time.

-OK, so, not bad.

-I know, it's good.

-Not bad.

I bet you were like me at home, keeping track of it.

Honestly, I'm hopeless, I can't sleep through it at all.

Although the company has still had to pay compensation to some customers,

it's far less than the previous year

and the fiasco of 2013 has been avoided.

The storm may have been weathered, but two weeks later,

dark clouds are gathering again for the energy company.

The wholesale gas price has plummeted to a five-year low

and the big six are under fire once again for not passing on

the cuts to their customers.

Today, E.ON became the first of the big six energy firms

to cut its gas prices by 3.5%.

OK, the phone lines are closed between 8:00 and 8:45.

Four of the big six have cut their gas prices

and SSE has little choice but to follow suit.

Guys, you don't need to worry about getting yourselves logged on,

etc, we've got loads of time this morning.

The phones won't be touched till staff have been properly briefed.

You're probably going to need a little seat, guys,

cos we're going to be around half an hour.

The media are saying that the cuts are too little, too late,

and the team needs to have a consistent company line.

We have announced a cut to our gas prices this morning,

which is a really, really good news story, isn't it,

-when you think about it, guys?

-ALL:

-Yes.

Absolutely. So what that means is there's going to be £28 per year

reduction on a typical gas bill.

We are delighted to be cutting our bills for the second time in

13 months, so that's a really good positive message to be giving

to our customers, isn't it, when you think about it?

And we're also guaranteeing these low prices until July 2016 at least

and if we can cut again, we absolutely will, yeah?

-Is everyone keeping up so far?

-ALL:

-Yeah.

Yeah? Oh, fabulous, OK.

We're also the only supplier to offer customers this additional

peace of mind and it very much fits in with our model

of treating our customers fairly.

So what's your thoughts on that, then, guys?

It's great. It's positive.

Yeah?

Isn't that amazing, when you think about it?

Though prices are coming down, there's a catch.

Some of the mechanics behind it is

we're obviously cutting the customers in from the 30th of April.

The cut won't come into effect until the spring...

after the cold weather.

If we can, I think what would be a great idea is

putting escalation vests on this morning as well,

so that we can make sure we're being consistent with our approach back.

Fab, thanks, guys.

The escalation team are there to help if telephone staff

get asked awkward questions.

Social media is already buzzing with the new price cuts.

The first one is saying, "Yahoo!"

Yahoo. So I'm just going to what...

We do what we call tagging, so tagging this person and I'm clicking

it as a positive sentiment, that's brilliant, that's great.

But the next one is negative, so I'll go back to them.

-INTERVIEWER:

-What it's saying?

"Saving £20 a year, whooo,

"looking after themselves, not their customers."

Morning, NC, just a reminder, if you've had your brief,

if you can get online and available, that would be brilliant.

We've got lots of customers waiting to speak to us, the phone lines

are going to go live again in a wee minute, OK?

All ready?

Yay, thanks, guys.

Good morning, you're through to Daniel at SSE, how can I help?

Our prices have dropped and they will be dropped on 30th April.

Saving 4.1% on a typical gas bill.

-'That's all right, that, isn't it?'

-Yeah!

And we've also agreed to keep that gas price and electric prices

the same until July 2016 for you.

Was there anything else that I could do for you today?

'You've done everything you can for me, my love, thank you very much.'

Lovely.

Call centre staff are getting a positive response from customers.

-INTERVIEWER:

-So are you a happy bunny?

Yes, I am, yeah.

I'm away to put a wee high five on for my team for how well they've

done this morning, so it seems to have pulled together well so far.

And a big high five to you guys as well for organising it this morning.

Woo, high five! OK, thanks very much, guys.

It's been a hectic day for call centre staff

and Chief Executive Alistair Phillips-Davies

is on hand to show his appreciation.

Hi, nice to meet you.

Put your high five on, we're going to get a photograph taken,

-Jess has come in with the photograph.

-There you go.

This is mainly because Dawn has been voted this month...

Brilliant. Are you going to get a new reward for this,

like a box of chocolates or something?

-Yeah, hopefully.

-Hopefully.

But no matter how well the price cuts have been handled,

they'll put an unexpected dent in Alistair's profits.

-There you go, excellent.

-Yay.

Our issue is that, you know, we've bought a load of gas

and other fuels now that are looking expensive and we, you know,

we've got to weigh that loss for our customers.

-INTERVIEWER:

-And you say it's going to cost you 60 million,

-is that right?

-Yeah, it'll take a bit over 60 million

off our income for next year.

Presumably people would throw at you, if you could live without

that 60 million, why weren't you living without that 60 million?

Well, it's about the long-term health of our business,

so how do we invest in the long-term health of our business, basically?

We have to run a profitable business cos many people's pension funds

are invested in it and, you know, again, you know, we're there

paying wages for 20,000 people up and down the UK.

We need to be able to do that,

but sometimes you have to take a little bit of pain in that.

Alistair's bottom line will take the hit, but he won't be alone.

For all the big six, profits are under pressure across the board

and not just from fluctuating prices.

Government efforts to make us use less energy have been successful -

it's down nearly 20% since 2000.

This may be good news for the country as a whole, but if selling power

is your business, it poses a problem.

Thank you.

As head of the company's retail business,

it's a problem Will needs to address.

I need to make sure I'm making the right profits to deliver

the targets so I can actually invest in the business.

I can try, as I have been trying, to be more engaging in our advertising

and show the more emotionally attractive sides of energy,

but that only goes so far.

Thank you very much.

The plan is to diversify and find alternative ways of generating income

by selling us other products as well as energy.

One of the challenges we have with having our new character is that

she's very compelling, I'm talking about Maya here, our orang-utan,

and therefore people basically look in wonderment at her,

to the point actually sometimes they may not necessarily hear

what we're saying.

In her second appearance, Maya is going to be selling broadband.

The central theme for the campaign will be lower, longer, more.

And the voiceover says,

"Are you searching for an energy company that offers great value,

"one that keeps its prices lower...

"freezes them for longer

"and gives you more, with two years' free unlimited broadband?"

When was the last time somebody gave two years' free broadband?

It's market leading. On the back wall, we project our theme,

"Lower, longer, more."

The new Maya commercial won't come cheap

and Will must make every penny count.

I can't even see it from here and I'm staring at it.

-They are bigger than that.

-I don't think you could read the logo,

you certainly can't read the website. A bit black and white,

even though it's supposed to be in colour. I don't want to art direct

the advertising, but I don't think it's particularly visually,

you know, compelling in terms of the creative. It's dark...

The copy should sort of talk about it's for all our customers,

"If you'd like to be part of our family," or something,

it's obviously where an invitation to join comes in.

It's worth playing around with it, Steven. I just don't think

the execution is nice, I think it doesn't feel sufficiently...

I don't want, if you like... The brand launch was quite sort of

beautifully done, it was very glossy, it was very emotional,

which is good.

This, I think, needs to be much more...

I see like a giant "2" all over the place, you know, something much

more, sort of... I think you both said it sounds a bit tacky,

but something much more sort of sales promotional,

-rather than just brandy.

-OK.

I would suggest.

Thank you, Steven.

If Will is to hit his targets, Maya needs to deliver...

Did anyone make you aware, whoever it was going through

the process with you, of our telephone and broadband packages?

..and with less energy being used,

call centre staff are also expected to sell, sell, sell.

Are you aware that we do telephone and broadband?

But since the mis-selling scandal of 2013,

they no longer cold-call customers.

Good morning, you're through to Hannah at SSE,

thank you for holding, how can I help you today?

They wait for customers to call in with a problem.

Just to mention to yourself a few things that we do have to offer

and hopefully save you a bit of money, but did you know that

we do provide boiler cover as well?

The customer service and marketing departments are now

effectively one and the same.

Did you want to get some prices and so forth to see what we can do

for your boiler cover?

We have a system called Sat-Nav, which pretty much just...

When you put their account number in, it gives you options

that you can ask the customer about, things to offer.

Is there anything else that I can help you with at all?

No?

That does help you out to go back,

"Oh, yeah, did you know that we do this, did you know that we do that?"

When was the last time it was serviced?

'I wouldn't know, cos I've only been in here since October.'

Oh, right, since October.

We're not salespeople, we're just giving them an option to say that

there is other things that we do do.

And why not grow the business?

I mean, we are a business, we're here to make money, aren't we?

So it's one of them things.

When you've sorted it all out and everything, just keep us in mind

because, you know, I mean, we might sort you out with a good deal.

I'm just going to work out for you roughly how much your bill will be

and, if you like, I can see if there's any other ways at all

we can save you any money on your account while I've got you.

-Do you have access to the internet at all?

-'No, love.'

You don't. OK, no, that's absolutely fine.

Talk of broadband, shield,

anything that you have to, like, kind of sign yourself into,

they're all scripted, it's an actual script that you have to

run through bit by bit.

So you get £100 worth of shopping vouchers in with the tariff as well.

'I'll stick as I am, love.'

I find it really difficult to bring it across without sounding

really sales-y, like, "Oh, by the way, did you hear about this?"

For Head of Call Centres Tracey Costley and her teams,

integrating sales and customer service is a challenge.

I hate being tagged onto the back of a normal call,

someone trying to do something more with me, so we're really careful

the way it doesn't... We don't want it to sound like that,

cos it's awful, so if at the right time, right in the middle

of the call, not at the end of the call, they'll say, "We might have

"something to talk about later with you, is that OK?

"We might be able to save you some money?"

So they sort of ask for the customer's permission,

cos if you don't ask for permission, it's really irritating.

I don't feel like we've got many here today,

it doesn't feel like we've got many here today.

Today Tracey's hosting a "Lunch and Learn" for her troops.

Good morning, good morning, everyone.

Good afternoon, actually, how are we all?

All right, good, we're a bit short today...

And while they're lunching, the teams will be learning

whether their hard work on customer service has paid off.

Results of the latest external satisfaction survey are in.

How do you feel that we've done as a customer service

and sales organisation?

If you feel that we've done better than last year, put your hand up.

OK, thanks, Andy.

Who thinks we've done better on complaints this year than last year?

OK, yeah.

You're right, OK.

Who thinks we've done better around telephones this year,

answering phones, than last year?

It's really interesting, there's a few, you're right, OK.

I'm going to show you how we've done externally for the last 12 months

and you might be surprised, apart from one of you, all right?

Five out of six consumer groups

have put SSE number one for customer services.

I just need to make sure everyone knows how we've done.

Brilliant, bloody brilliant, right? This is really good stuff.

So, my lovely service team, you've done better

and that's really bloody good.

After a tough year, it's a result for Tracey and her teams.

Right, we're going to love and leave you.

Thank you very much, guys, thank you.

If we can make a customer go, "Do you know what?

"I'd rather be with a company that looks after us for £2 a month more

"than be with a company that doesn't," then maybe that's us.

Maybe that's us.

I'd like to think it is.

It's 7:00am on the day the company's yearly profits are announced.

It's a big story and Chief Executive Alistair Phillips-Davies

is doing the rounds of news studios.

What time does the BBC breakfast go out, 7:50?

Yeah, 7:50.

Right, OK, that's cool.

Higher profits are a double-edged sword for Alistair.

Shareholders will be pleased,

but he's likely to get a roasting in the media.

-INTERVIEWER:

-What do you expect from the media this morning?

What do I expect? Er...

Well, I'm sure they'll be interested in results and profits,

they always are.

I'm not sure I'm going to make people love the energy sector,

I'm not really... I'm not like the rock star getting on stage here

and, you know, hitting the first chord of a great song.

One, two, three, four, five.

It's Alistair Phillips-Davies, yes.

End-of-year figures show that Will's Maya ad campaign

and the hard work of the sales teams have paid off.

Profits in the all-important retail sector are up 40%.

I think it's been a mixed bag

in what's been a pretty challenging year.

'Let me ask you then, retail operating profits up by almost 40%,

'wholesale gas prices down 17% year on year,

'these numbers are going to surprise people, aren't they?'

Well, for us, retail profits are up on last year,

but actually, they've just got back to the level they were in '12-13.

-INTERVIEWER:

-So, come on, give us the post-match analysis.

Well, it's for somebody else to say,

I don't like marking my own homework generally, so... But I'm not sure

we're wildly doing different things that we were never doing before,

but I think we spend a bit more time communicating it now,

or worrying about how we put that message across.

People were definitely more sceptical and aggressive a year,

18 months ago and maybe they had a right to do that,

but hopefully we've earned the right to have a better hearing.

By the time I get home at 8:30 tonight, I'll...

I'll crack open a pint...

In reality, it'll probably be a glass of wine.

Try putting together your own power grid

with the Open University's "Power My Postcode" interactive tool.

Go to bbc.co.uk/powertothepeople and follow the links.