Cadent provide a connections service to customers that request a new gas connection or a change to an existing gas connection. As a part of this process Cadent carries out site surveys for any connection request that is received. Surveys are normally carried out in person, on site, by a surveyor. The number of surveys possible in a day are therefore limited due to travel time. In addition to this 5-10% of jobs are aborted once a team arrives on site and the site is not ready to be surveyed.
The cost to perform 400 surveys in a month in West Midlands is circa 36k, including the cost of aborted visits. Customers also face a lead time of 6-7 days from acceptance to initial survey, and a further 1-2 weeks for the customer to then receive a planned date.
In addition, during COVID, it was identified that many customers who were in lock-down or shielding preferred to limit access of our teams into their homes.
The proposed solution is a product called Vyntelligence, which will enable Customers to control the survey process as they will be able to capture the initial survey requirements themselves. This solution will allow surveyors to remotely survey sites, reducing the cost per survey and increasing the number of surveys possible in a day. This also reduces the lead times for customers and provides a better customer journey if the customer can use the proposed solution. In addition to allowing video capture of surveys, Vyn offers further computing intelligence to pick out words and prompt actions, driving “right-first-time” data capture.
Notes on Completion: Please refer to the appropriate NIA Governance Document to assist in the completion of this form. The full completed submission should not exceed 6 pages in total.
Objectives
To deliver a remote surveying solution for connections that will provide customers an easy to use, app free, method of submitting videos for use by Cadent surveyors and planning teams. The solution will:
- Be app free for the end customer
- Be a standalone application for engineers/surveyors and planning teams
- Easy to navigate and be user friendly
- Adhere to GDPR legislation
In addition to this the trial will:
- Identify whether remote surveying is effective and on which job types
- Provide feedback from customers on the customer journey
- Reduce customer related aborted visits
- Reduce lead time for connection requests from acceptance to planned date
- Increase productivity of surveyors and reduce cost to survey
- Reduce customer waiting for a survey backlog and customer awaiting plan date backlog
- Limit contact with customers that are shielding and prefer to limit access of out teams into their homes
Learnings
Outcomes
The project delivered the following:
- A guided and app-free solution for customers to record and submit videos
- An app and dashboard for Cadent End users to securely access customer video
- X Storyboards including:
- New connections
- Alterations
- Site Ready
- Customer Feedback/Enquiries
- Site Tidy
- Data on the job types that are best suited for virtual surveying
- Data on the possible uptake by customers when offered a choice between traditional surveys and virtual surveys
A platform to develop and trial future storyboard for various other Customer Journeys
Lessons Learnt
This project has demonstrated the benefits of an agile, sprint-based, development for a technology/software-based innovation project. Weekly development meetings throughout the project allowed for regular review of the project plans and scope of each stage and allowed for small amendments to made and tested quickly.
Key to the successful delivery off the front-end app and app-less video capture for customers was the ability of the developer to make live changes to the storyboards which meant customer feedback could be fed back into the project and the solution modified very quickly.
