Our purpose is to power a cleaner and brighter future with our community. This means that our customers are at the heart of what we do.
This has never been more important than it is today. The electricity sector is in an era of transformation. Our customers want affordable power, more control over where their energy comes from, and how they consume it. It is vital we listen and adapt our business to respond.
We don’t have all the answers, and that’s why we engage with our community.
Making it easier for our community to engage with us is key to connecting and understanding. Orion Have Your Say(external link) is an online engagement space where we share ideas, discuss important topics, and let you know about what we’re doing.
On Have Your Say you can find out about current projects, how we’re getting ready for the future and how you can have your say.
A secure and resilient power supply is essential to how we live, work, and play and it’s important that our community has opportunities to share their views. The community power panel is a way to have a say on the challenges and opportunities facing the electricity industry and our network.
Panel members are invited to participate in on-line forums and surveys through out the year. These will provide us with valuable information to help us get ready for the future, and to plan and manage our network.
If you’re keen to be part of the panel, visit Orion Have Your Say(external link) and register.
Our customer advisory panel is a forum for us to engage with local leaders that represent our community. The panel has an advocacy focus and helps us understand our customer’s electricity needs, issues and requirements.
The panel provides valuable insights that inform how we manage and maintain the electricity network. Our customers benefit from having their perspective represented in decisions about future investment and service enhancements.
Panel members represent a cross section of our community and reflect the diverse perspective of our customers. The panel includes up to twelve representatives from:
At the latest panel session we discussed Orion’s purpose and strategy, the outcomes of the customer perception survey and material assessment for the Orion Group.
The next session of the customer advisory panel will be held in 2024.
If you, or your organisation, would like to participate in the Customer Advisory Panel, please fill in the form below and let us know the perspective you provide, and why you wish to participate.
The panel meets up to four times a year, for two hours in the evening. Prior to the session, there may be pre-reading for panel members to help them participate in discussions, and panel members may also be asked to provide comment or feedback on the matters discussed.
Our customers are important to us. To understand their satisfaction with our service, customers’ views on our network reliability, their level of trust in Orion, and opinions on a variety of topical matters, each year we commission a customer satisfaction survey.
This survey, carried out by independent researchers, tells us what our customers value and how well we’re serving them. We use the insights from the survey to highlight areas where increased engagement with the local community or investment in our network would be welcomed.
Powerful conversations are in-person workshops we hold to better understand what our customers and community think on a deeper level and tease out why they feel the way they do.
In an informal, conversational setting facilitated by independent researchers, we seek our community’s views on what’s important to them. We seek feedback on our purpose and strategy, our investment priorities, emerging technologies and how we prepare for the future, and how we can support our community ‘s electricity needs and wants.
In our latest workshops we sought feedback on our investment priorities. Participants ranked resilience, operational efficiency, future readiness, sustainability, and customer experience in order of importance.
For our customers the clear priority, now and for the future, was investment in the resilience of the network. The importance of reliability was also seen as part of resilience. Our customers wanted to see as few disruptions to supply as possible, and power restored as quickly as possible. Sustainability and future readiness were also important. Customer experience and operational efficiency ranked low relative to other priorities.
Participants told us that if all other priorities were taken care of, these would be too. However, participants valued investment in customer experience when thinking about others’ needs, particularly vulnerable customers, and during outages.