Doha: Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) has said that the smart meters started supporting the system to restore electricity of customers remotely taking hardly five minutes after bill payment.
The smart meters will enable avoiding the manual electricity re-connection system, saving time of customers significantly as they don't need to call Kahramaa hotline to dispatch field team for restoring the disconnected electricity connection.
“Smart meters of #Kahramaa have made remarkable progress on reliability & efficiency levels of bringing monthly readings by 97%, facilitating electricity reconnection to customers remotely and automatically after five minutes of paying their fees (bills),” Kahramaa has tweeted.
Kahramaa, in a recent report, said that it replaced regular meters with over 200,000 smart electricity meters across the country by the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2021.
The smart meter, one of the most prominent projects of Kahramaa for digital transformation, targets to install 600,000 advanced digital meters to read energy consumption more accurately and effectively and transmit the required information safely and quickly.
The smart meters provide real-time readings of power consumption, a better understanding of consumption pattern and enhancing ability of customers to make rationalisation decisions. The smart meters also enable customers to monitor their consumption which supports the objectives of the National Program for Conservation and Energy Efficiency (Tarsheed).
The installation of mart meters is part of a major project of Kahramaa to enhance its services to customers. Kahramaa said that customers are given top priority in its strategic plans to provide them will all services of international standards.
In 2021, approximately 8,300 new electricity licenses and 6,425 water licenses were studied and 7,444 requests to amend electricity and water services for customers.
Kahramaa received 9,238 requests for electricity and water supply, 422 requests seeking connections by farms, and 4,022 requests for the service connections by other customers.
During the period of study, Kahramaa received 164,062 complaints, of them 99.65 percent were responded on time. In an effort to develop customer support services, the new Kahramaa customers service 991 IVR interactive voice service list has been activated in order to facilitate the process of testing the required service and reduce waiting time.
Self-service channels have also been created to record customers’ emergency communications related to the electricity and water services (automatically) without the need to transfer the call to a service employee, by making use of the interactive automated response service.
Kahramaa also launched a chatbot system based on artificial intelligence to address the inquiries and complaints of customers received via the WhatsApp platform through the official Kahramaa account at the number 30303991.
These efforts contributed in reducing the average customers waiting time to reach the call center representative, as the Kahramaa achieved an average of approximately 78 seconds in 2021, compared to 90 seconds in 2020, which is a tangible progress and success calculated for the Customer Services Department.
