The Kahramaa smart meters restore power within five minutes

January 15, 2022

2 minutes read

The Kahramaa smart meters restore power within five minutes

Doha: Smart metres are now enabling customers to re-establish electricity remotely in just five minutes after paying their bills, stated Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa).

Customers will save time by not having to call the Kahramaa hotline to dispatch a field team to restore the disconnected electricity connection since smart metres will allow them to skip the manual electricity re-connection method.

“Smart meters of #Kahramaa has 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.

In a recent report, Kahramaa stated that by the fourth quarter of 2021, it would have replaced over 200,000 normal metres with smart electricity metres across the country.

One of Kahramaa’s most visible projects for digital transformation is the smart metre, which aims to install 600,000 advanced digital metres to more correctly and effectively read energy usage and transfer the essential data safely and quickly.

Smart metres deliver real-time power usage readings, allowing customers to better understand their consumption patterns and make rationalisation decisions. Customers can also track their consumption with smart metres, which helps the National Program for Conservation and Energy Efficiency achieve its goals (Tarsheed).

The installation of smart metres is part of Kahramaa’s larger plan to improve customer service. Customers are given first priority in Kahramaa’s strategic initiatives, according to the company.

In 2021, roughly 8,300 new electricity licences and 6,425 water licences were investigated, as well as 7,444 requests for changes to customers’ power and water services.

Kahramaa received 9,238 requests for power and water, 422 requests from farms, and 4,022 requests from other consumers.

164,062 complaints were received by Kahramaa during the study period, with 99.65% of them being resolved on time. The new Kahramaa customers service 991 IVR interactive voice service list has been launched in an effort to improve customer support services by making the process of testing the desired service easier and reducing wait times.

Customers’ emergency communications connected to energy and water services have also been recorded (automatically) via the interactive automated response service, without the need to transfer the call to a service employee.

Kahramaa recently established an artificial intelligence-based chatbot system to respond to client enquiries and concerns submitted over WhatsApp at the number 30303991.

These initiatives resulted in a reduction in the average customer wait time to reach a call centre representative, with the Kahramaa achieving an average of roughly 78 seconds in 2021, compared to 90 seconds in 2020, indicating tangible improvement and success for the Customer Services Department.