Customer communication is vital

It was not that long ago that areas of Johannesburg, South Africa were regularly plunged into darkness. The reason, rolling blackouts instituted by the electricity supplier Eskom. The cause, not enough electricity production to meet the demand.

It was a number of events that led to this position, one being that generation capacity had been severely hampered by a number of generation failures. Another being that total demand had been steadily growing over time while the total generation capacity had not. Long story short - business and political disaster.

Eskom struggled to communicate to its customers when these blackouts would occur, how long they would last, if the blackout currently in an area was a scheduled one or an actual fault. It was ludicrous.

Then appeals to all - do your bit! Save electricity, don't leave the TV on, install ripple switches on your geyser, consumers of bulk electricity such as mines must curtail operations, no new houses may be built unless they have solar heaters for water and maybe even gas ovens and stove tops. Also, electricity tariffs will have to be increased to pay for more generation capacity.

Hooray! The problem seems to be rectified. No blackouts for some time.

Then today Eskom announce so more news. Due to the drop in electricity consumption (partly due to a downturn in the economy and probably partly due to everyone trying to save electricity) the electricity tariffs will have to be increased.

Excuse me?

This illustrates how important it is to make sure your customers are not in the dark (please pardon the pun, but I think you will agree it would have been irresponsible of me not to use it). It also shows how important long term strategy is - but that is another discussion for another day. By communicating properly with your customer and being transparent on the basis of decisions you create trust.

Why is it important to create trust? Simple. People pay for it.