®ilina, June 2004

The entry of the strategic investor Electricité de France (EdF) into SSE has brought about a lot of positive changes into the rules and management of the company. One of the changes, which is also visible to everyday customers, is the improvement in communication on all levels.

"One of the first things we accented right after our entry into SSE is the marketing approach to customers on all levels. This is inevitable on a liberalized market where customers are free to select their provider of electrical energy", said Patrik Luccioni, the Chairman of the SSE board, and he added that this is particularly translated into the reinforcement of the call center, the improvement of our own staff in the sales offices and specialized approach to major customers who, in order to feel comfortable, require custom conditions and solutions.

The SSE call center is capable to respond to customer calls on a daily basis, whereby its extended capacity offers customers speedy advice and solution of their problems. The number of phone calls into the center is on an increase, which testifies to the fact that there is an ever-growing number of customers who have learnt to take the advantage of this type of troubleshooting and advising.

From the viewpoint of the call center, comparing the years 2001, 2002 and 2003 has recorded a huge increase of the calls, whereby in 2001 there were 11 459 calls, in 2002, there were 67 408 calls and in 2003 150 438 calls.

Customers appreciate professional advice of the call center staff who are able to answer questions on any changes with respect to payment options or advance payments. The call center functions as a flexible funnel to gather information about faults and outages and its level has helped to decrease the time necessary for corrective action to eliminate them.

SSE has pledged to strengthen its capacity and to improve the level of its services the center is able to provide.

The new style of communication with corporate customers goes in line with strengthening the marketing approach. Each major SSE client has its own SSE sales representative who provides the client with all information on payments, savings and recommendations on optimum tariffs and solves the client´s potential problems.

The changes in customer approach have also touched the district sales offices where the EDF experts played a key role in providing training based on their worldwide experience. The changes in sales offices, which were primarily focused on improving professional attitudes of the staff, were also meant to reduce their numbers and to strengthen the capacity of the call center, which is taking over ever increasing numbers of primary customer contact instances.

Despite the fact that the market is liberalized and each valid customer is free to choose his provider, SSE has lost not a single customer.

"Our aim was not to loose a single customer, which we effectively managed. We cannot, however, stay content with our success, we must keep on improving the quality of our services, whereby communication and open approach to customers are one of the key conditions of success", says Mr. Luccioni.