Proactively communicating with customers

The challenge of achieving our objective not only hinges on the technical side of our work. After all, we work for customers, and what we do is visible and noticeable to residents and companies in the areas surrounding our work. If we dig up the road in front of our customers’ homes and interrupt the power to carry out our work safely, this causes inconvenience and nuisance. Customers require clarity in these cases. This will become increasingly important, especially if more consumers and small businesses will be dealing with waiting times in the future and we are working in several locations at once.

This is why we record customer information in a central location and conduct customer surveys. We do this to find out how we can inform customers better and improve regional communication. Construction managers and foremen can also use this information when talking to market parties or local media, for example.

Customer strategy

Many different parts of Alliander’s organisation are responsible for serving our customers. In 2023 we developed a customer and channel strategy that directs all the departments in contact with customers. Part of this is a customer data model to ensure that we store data in the same way in all organisational units. In addition to this, we have trained 16 ambassadors who involve customers in the development of new products and services. We do this through customer surveys and panel discussions. The intention is for us to improve how much our services align with the needs and expectations of our customers.
An Alliander-wide integrated multi-disciplinary team was also set up last year to manage the improvement of how we serve our customers throughout the company. This allows us to manage and direct integrated customer services from a central location.

Tracking requests on ‘Mijn Liander’

In 2023 we improved the provision of information to our customers by investing in a customer system that helps us give customers the right answers to their questions. We have also made certain choices to prioritise our efforts. We started out with low-volume customers. This is a large group of customers who are increasingly having to deal with network congestion. Since early 2024, customers have been able to track the status of their request on ‘Mijn Liander’ (My Liander), even without a ‘Mijn Liander’ account. They receive an email with a link that provides direct access to the request status page. 

Improved regional communication

In addition to introducing a new customer system, we are also focusing on good regional communication. As part of the national press campaign on October 18th regarding network congestion, we organised separate press events for each region. In connection with Liander’s investment plans, we launched the ‘Liander in jouw buurt’ (Liander in your district) format, in which we show local work being performed by sharing it on social media and in that district.