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Faults
- Fees: Normal working hours is a free service; outside hours is a charge direct to customer i.e time/travel/materials. This would typically be 1 hour of time plus travel/materials about $150-$200 depending on location.
Safety Disconnect
If it is not fuses being pulled but rather the mains cable being disconnected from the house – then the customer will need to obtain an electrician to provide an ROI prior to it being re-livened. -
Safety Reconnect
- Always get the cell number. Used if digging near cables, poles, equipment, using crane or scaffolding near lines. If a customer rings back to say the job has been completed email the Control Room.
Close Approach
- Accuracy – customer name, address and phone number. We can’t find the customer in the system if these are spelt incorrectly. We need the address including the street number and the name on the power-bill to verify we are entering it against the right ICP. NB: Some addresses have multiple ICPS and multiple customers. We are having to ring the customer to clarify.
Duplicate Emails – we are still receiving these – I believe an IT glitch
Secondary Emails – we are receiving an email and entering the fault and then in some instances receiving a secondary email with additional information. It is not easy to update the fault once entered and is causing rework.
ETAS – asking us to call the customer with an ETA – during the week unlikely to happen. This is raising the customer’s expectations. Please refer to lead-times but not verbatim i.e. most likely within the next couple of hours. . E.g. In one case a CSR told a customer we would call them back, as she had not heard from us she rung an electrician unnecessarily and then hit Unison up for payment of the bill.
Phone Numbers – It’s not a given that we will be ringing electricians etc. if the phone number is on the email. That is just for the fault man to get in touch with them onsite – increasingly we have electricians waiting for a call that is not going to eventuate.
Asking the customer if they have checked the switchboard – need to ensure this is done so that the % of jobs the Fault men are attending when they need to just reset a switch doesn’t increase, taking up time and costing us money. NB: They would be keen on photos of different types of switchboards to aid in their confidence in this area when trying to help the customer.
Demolishing a building – the customer needs to call their Retailer to organise this – terminology is a Permanent Disconnection and is a different process – not a fault call.
Asset Numbers – when an electrician has provided a pedestal number they should be able to provide a unique identifier as all Unison assets contain serial numbers.
Medical Reliance – If concerned about an outage due to a medical issue e.g. on oxygen – the customer should make arrangements to get to hospital NB: We can only give the customer an approximate duration of an outage.