The Consumer Engagement Award, a joint venture between Energy Consumers Australia and Energy Networks Australia (ENA), recognises an Australian energy network business that is demonstrating outstanding leadership in consumer engagement.
The awards began in 2017, and in those short five years the standard of consumer engagement has skyrocketed as network businesses consciously incorporate consumer values, expectations and needs into their everyday practices.
In advancing the impact of the awards, the Judging Panel – of which our CEO Lynne Gallagher is chair – has decided to share the learnings from both the shortlisted projects and the overall decision-making. The reasons are two-fold; to spread awareness of what makes good consumer engagement and to inspire all network businesses to implement these examples of best-practice processes.
To this end, a ‘Judging Panel Insights’ document has been created, outlining actions and impacts in four key areas which have consistently led to successful consumer engagement outcomes.
- Cultural change starts at the top
- The benefits of listening and learning
- Consumers influencing project evolution
- Ensuring consumer engagement leads to consumer outcomes
A new standard of excellence has become apparent and engaging in knowledge sharing is an important step in ensuring all networks deliver the services that consumers want. To better facilitate this, ENA hosted a webinar on the topic and invited this year’s winner and finalists to present. The networks and our Judging Panel then answered questions from the industry-based audience.
We must commend Australian Gas Network, Ergon Energy and Horizon Power for their achievement in reaching the shortlisted finalists, as well as Powerlink, this year’s winner of the Consumer Engagement Award. However, all ten nominated businesses demonstrated a commitment to strong consumer engagement and we thank and encourage all networks who are putting consumers at the heart of the business processes. Read more about all entries and the awards here.
We look forward to next year’s awards and seeing how future applications have incorporated these important sector learnings into their consumer engagement projects.
