The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Bahamas Power & Light’s (BPL) chairman yesterday admitted the utility has “lost the trust of most of our consumers”, while also conceding: “Our customer service is terrible.”

Dr Donovan Moxey, addressing the Bahamas Business Outlook conference, pledged that the state-owned monopoly will undergo a “customer centric” cultural transformation as part of the $650m bond refinancing that aims to finally place it on a sustainable financial footing.

He argued that BPL’s 17-year financial crisis, sparked by the ill-judged 2003 cut to its base tariff, had prevented the utility from investing in staff training and skills upgrades as well as its generation plant and transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure.

BPL is aiming to reverse this by using some of the $650m refinancing proceeds to establish a “state of the art” customer service centre by the 2020 second quarter, as part of its drive to “right the ship”. It will also invest $30m in smart meters, with the chairman admitting that its grid infrastructure is so “antiquated” it often does not know when electricity supply is out, and in which areas, due to T&D woes.

Dr Moxey said he had personally stood in bill payment queues to “understand the pain and frustration”, and promised that all BPL’s front office staff will be “trained to talk to, and empathise with”, long-suffering consumers who have had to put up with high costs, ever-increasing load shedding and unreliable supply for years.

The BPL chairman added that all foreign contractors hired by the utility will also be mandated to provide “training and knowledge transfer” to Bahamians as part of a strategy to “leapfrog up” when it comes to workforce competencies.

Promising that employee and customer safety will also see a renewed focus, Dr Moxey acknowledged that BPL’s relationship with most of its 100,000-plus customers had broken down in recent months and years due to the utility’s poor service and frequent blackouts that imposed additional costs on both businesses and households.

“What we’re doing here at BPL is we’re looking to right the ship,” Dr Moxey said. “We know it’s not been working individually, collectively, for many businesses and as a country. We know our customers are frustrated with us, we know some of our customers don’t like us and don’t think we’re going to fix the problem. We understand that. We want an opportunity to do so in ways we believe will help the entire country.

“Most of all, at BPL we will rebuild the trust of our customers. Most of our customer don’t trust what we say. We know that, and are committed to rebuilding that trust.” Many Bahamian businesses and households are likely to greet Dr Moxey’s confessions and promises with scepticism given BPL’s recent track record of daily load shedding/blackouts, unreliable supply and damaged equipment.

This is likely why most persons are suspicious of BPL’s pledge that the impact of its $650m refinancing, which it is aiming to close by mid-February, will be “cost neutral” even though an extra charge - equivalent to 15 percent of each customer’s consumption - will be added to their bills from March 2020 onwards (see other article on Page 1B).

“Our customer service quality is terrible. It needs to be improved,” Dr Moxey also admitted. “We recognise this, we’re owning this. All the executives that stood up [during the conference] are owning this. One of the most important things is to take responsibility and solve it.

“We have to keep employees trained. We’ve had no money to do that. As a result of that, the kind of development we needed to do over the last 15 years we didn’t do. We’re committed to righting the ship. We’re also changing our culture around safety at BPL, making sure employees are safe and customers are safe.

“I’ve stood on the line to understand the consumer’s pain and frustration. Sometimes you just call the number and it rings and rings and rings. We’re going to build a state-of-the-art customer service centre by the second quarter that will be open 24/7 and 365 days a year.

“We will take responsibility, fix and own that. Every employee who goes in front of the customer will be trained in how to talk to, and empathise with, the customer. More important, we will build a culture that is customer focused and customer centric. We’re doing business like everyone else, albeit we’re a monopoly, but that should not stop us providing the best service and best product.”

Dr Moxey affirmed that part of the $650m refinancing proceed will be “invested in our people”. He added: “I can tell you this, Bahamians. Every contractor that comes in here and works on transmission and distribution, part of that engagement is training and knowledge transfer.

“We’re going to build our people. We’re going to take the technology of today and leapfrog up. We can’t do that internally. We need outside help.” The BPL chairman added that the utility’s new procurement system was designed to “give opportunities to Bahamians”, as all firms had the opportunity to register on its portal.

Dr Moxey, though, also hailed the evolution and widespread use of What’s App for enabling consumers to report to BPL when power was off in their area. He revealed that the utility was often unable to detect T&D-related failures, but voiced optimism that the planned roll-out of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) will now alert it to such problems in real time.

“The system is that antiquated we don’t even know when electricity goes off in certain areas,” Dr Moxey said. “Thank God for What’s App. With AMI we will know instantly when it goes off. These are a lot of the investments that need to be made in the electricity infrastructure of The Bahamas.”

He argued that BPL’s current Board had “ushered in a new era of transparency” via What’s App and a “revamped website” that created better and more direct links to customers.