Engaging with our communities

We're committed to engaging with the communities we serve; to understand their needs and inform the decisions we make about the future of our networks.

You’ll find many of our community engagement activities and partnerships, as well as information about where we’re investing in the electricity or gas networks in your area on the community map link below

 

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Community map

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Community Engagement
Community partnerships
Investing in your community's electricity network
What we do
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  • Engaging with communities

    Goals and targets

    Here’s what we want to achieve for Pou whakakotahitanga over the short, medium and long-term. 

    Goals and targets FY25

    • Delivering value for customers - Successfully trial varying low voltage network battery configurations, as a proof of concept for deferring higher cost upstream lines investments and to prepare for a future larger scale roll-out.
    • Delivering value for customers - Continue to improve our customers' experience across Powerco's electricity footprint, by a 5-point increase in Customer Satisfaction score. 
    • Delivering value for customers - Maintain net promoter score of >50 to measure our quality of gas customer service and customer experience.
    • Delivering value for customers - 5-point increase in brand and reputation score from the FY24 Quarterly Customer Survey average of 40%.
    • Understanding our customer's needs - Publish annual customer insight information and how this has guided our decision making. 
    • Delivering value for customers - Improve pricing methodology and contributions policy - as reviewed in the Electricity Authority scorecard. 

     

    • Delivering value for customers - Establish and embed a Distributed System Operator (DSO) programme for Powerco where we partner with customers to optimise opportunities for distributed energy resources and other flexibility applications.

  • Engaging with communities

    What we’ve done FY24

    We’ve been making progress towards our goals and targets. Here’s what we worked on between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024.

    What we've done FY24

    • We achieved our customer experience target with a Customer Satisfaction score for FY24 of 59% (up from +52 in Q4 FY23 which was the 1st time we measured it in this way). 
    • During FY24, we achieved a net promoter score of 63 for gas customers receiving a new connection. This is our highest rating since we first started measuring this in 2016 and well above our target of +52.
    • Increased numbers of Powerco employees are now aware and engaged with our Te Raa framework. This has resulted in an increase in the quantity and quality of tangata whenua interactions.  Our relationships with identified tangata whenua are being increasingly viewed as partnerships rather than transactional relationships. 
    • We did not meet our target of publishing customer insights relating to customer views on reliability, price, sustainability, service experience and use/planned uptake of new technologies.  Foundational systems and processes to implement a meaningful customer insights programme were established during FY24 and tested through customer satisfaction research.  We are well placed to expand our research programme in FY25 and be in a position of publishing findings.
    • During FY24, we undertook a gap analysis against the international integrated reporting framework. Look out for our report in FY25 - our first step on the journey to more integrated style reporting.

  • Engaging with communities

    What we’ve done FY23

    We’ve been making progress towards our goals and targets. Here’s what we worked on between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023.

    What we’ve done FY23

    • Strong relationships across our network are essential for effective delivery of our work programme and understanding customers' future needs and preferences. An initial stakeholder management plan was developed based on community stakeholders identified through our new stakeholder management system.   
    • Our stakeholder management system has been established and is being progressively implemented across Powerco to increase our ability to engage with customers and stakeholders.
    • We are improving our knowledge of customers’ views and preferences through annual and quarterly customer surveys and a pricing survey. Customer insights findings will be published annually from FY24. 
    • The Te Raa framework, our engagement plan with Tangata Whenua is complete and being socialised with Powerco staff.
    • Powerco has a range of community engagements aligned to our sustainability priorities including Replant for Tomorrow, Pokaiwhenua Catchment planting in Putāruru, Taranaki Festival of Lights, Wildbase Recovery in Manawatū, and Greytown's Festival of Christmas.
    • Customer satisfaction surveying and benchmarking was completed in FY23. The metrics needed for an effort index have been identified and introduction of these will continue in FY24. 
    • We achieved an NPS of +52 for customer experience of the gas connection process. While this is below the +58 target and a drop from our 2021 NPS of +55, supply chain issues continue to impact the customer connection experience.
    • With our new Te Raa Framework in place, engagement with Tangata Whenua is planned to step up in FY24.
    • Our unplanned outage page was successfully launched during FY23. Further improvements to the page are planned for FY24.

Supporting customers to be energy efficient

Our target: To implement a support plan for vulnerable customer groups by the 2023 financial year.

Our mahi: We partnered with WISE Charitable Trust to provide free coaching for households at risk of energy hardship.

Learn more

The pillars of our work