In recent years, several legislative reforms have taken place targeting an increase in private sector investments in the energy sector. This was followed by presidential decree of electricity reform law No. 87 of 2015 which removed the state’s monopoly over the energy sector. The Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy (MoERE) and the Egyptian Electricity Holding Company (EEHC) then needed to focus on transforming the Holding Company and its nine distribution companies into more customer-centric organizations and creating a comfortable and structured customer experience, which would allow them to effectively compete in an open market.
CID team collaborated with GIZ Egypt and the Egyptian- German Joint Committee on Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency and Environmental Protection (JCEE), MoERE, and EEHC through the “Transformation Roadmap of the Customer Service Centres of the Electricity Distribution Companies” project. The project aimed to develop a customer experience strategy that positions EEHC as a customer-centred organization providing high quality services that ensures customer satisfaction.
The CID team approached the assignment by conducting a thorough, in-depth assessment to formulate a deep understanding of the EEHC and the Distribution Companies’ (DISCOs) operations and services. The team examined various customer services channels such as service centres, e-service platforms, and the company’s 121 Hotline. Based on the assessment findings, the CID team designed a full-fledged customer experience strategy that utilizes omni-channels for customer service delivery, operates in a modern, innovative, and digitally enabled environment and partners with the private sector to provide sustainably high-quality, accessible services. The team also developed a transformation roadmap outlining the strategy implementation and a financial business case that determines and forecasts the ROI of the strategy execution.
The CID team also worked on the implementation of this roadmap through:
- Conducting a pilot of the customer service centre development in El Obour service centre of the North Cairo DISCO
- Guiding the implementation of the customer service centre development, conducted by the EEHC and DISCO teams in Qalyoub service centre and Maadi service centre of South Delta DISCO and South Cairo DISCO, respectively.
In an effort to institutionalize these development efforts and processes, the CID team also:
- Established service level agreements to regulate the partnerships between EEHC and DISCOs and the private sector companies.
- Developed a quality management system as per the requirements of the ISO 9001:2015 certificate.
- Developed a quality manual and services manual to sustain the services and their procedures
- Conducted a capacity building program for the EEHC, DISCOs, and service centres employees enabling them to acquire the needed competencies to implement the customer experience strategy.
- Developed the human resources management operations concerning managing and selecting talents in the customer services departments.
CID succeeded in the development of a customer experience strategy for the EEHC and the DISCOs, that enables them to deliver high quality customer experience and satisfaction in turn providing them with a strong competitive edge. In addition, the project resulted in improving the operations and services of three of the customer service centres through automation and capacity building for the centres’ employees. On the talent front, the improvement of managing the human resource operations resulted in developing a unified organizational structure for the customer service departments, performance management system, job description cards, functional competency framework, and competency-based selection tools. Several training programs have been conducted to improve the capabilities within EEHC, DISCOs, and service centres in regard to the services and the supporting operations. Finally, the project’s efforts resulted in the development of a tactical roadmap, empowering the EEHC and the DISCOs in the execution of the customer experience strategy on both the short term and the long term.
