The smart meters help remotely restore electricity after hardly 5 minutes of bill payment from customers, says Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa).

It saves time as manual electricity reconnection from the dispatch field team is no longer necessary to restore electricity collection.

“Smart meters of #Kahramaa has made remarkable progress on reliability & efficiency levels of bringing monthly readings by 97%, facilitating electricity reconnection to customers remotely and automatically after five minutes of paying their fees (bills),” Kahramaa has tweeted.

This project was initiated to help Kahramaa achieve digital transformation. The regular meters have already been replaced with over 200,000 smart meters across Qatar within the fourth quarter of 2021. However, the aim is to install 600,000 advanced digital meters that track energy consumption accurately and effectively send information.

The real-time information displayed on the smart meters gives the customers a proper understanding of consumption patterns and helps them make rational decisions. This is in alignment with the objectives of the National Program for Conservation and Energy Efficiency (Tarsheed).

This project is also a way to enhance the services to customers and they are given top priority as part of strategic plans of providing international standard services, said Kahramaa.

In 2021, roughly 8,300 new electricity licenses and 6,425 water licenses were studied and 7,444 requests to revise electricity and water services for customers.

Kahramaa received 9,238 electricity and water supply requests, 422 requests requiring connections by farms, and 4,022 service connection requests by other customers.

Kahramaa was able to efficiently respond to 99.65 per cent of the 164,062 complaints. Kahramaa customer service 991 IVR interactive voice service was developed to enhance customer support service by facilitating the process of testing services and reducing waiting time.

Self-service channels is another efficient and effective tool used to automatically record a customer's emergency on electricity and water services without a service employee, taking advantage of the interactive automated response service.

The chatbot system has been launched to address any inquiries or complaints from customers through the official Kahramaa WhatsApp account at the number 30303991.

All these efforts helped reduce the average customer waiting time to speak with a call centre representative. The studies show that the average has dropped from 90 seconds in 2020 to 78 seconds in 2021, which was calculated effectively and is a success for the Customer Services Department.

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Cover image credit: constructionweekonline

Inline image credit: Peninsula