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Goal: Become a world-class customer-focused energy company.

We believe that the customer is central to everything that we do at AGL. We aim to be the energy industry leader in terms of service delivery and customer management.

Our four-year program of business change (Project Phoenix) continued during 2008/09. The majority of our customers have now been transferred to a single billing system.

The system changes allow AGL to better understand and differentiate our services to meet each customer’s needs. This will provide a sound basis for better customer service in the future, although we recognise that the transition to the new system resulted in an unacceptable number of issues for some customers. AGL apologises to all of those customers affected by these problems.

Due to the distress that issues such as delayed billing have caused some customers, and the methods of handling customer interactions, AGL has received increased media and stakeholder attention over the past year.

AGL has been very concerned by these problems, The billing delays have now been resolved and service levels restored, but this has resulted in a six month delay in AGL realising the full benefits from the new billing system.

We have developed five key strategies to meet our goal of becoming a world-class customer focused energy company:

• Provide the best customer experience according to our customer needs;
• Sell and market our products responsibly;
• Support access to energy for all vulnerable customers;
• Provide products, services and information to help customers make informed energy choices to benefit their home and the environment; and
• Respond to critical events where the provision of energy to our customers is impacted.

AGL’s Customer Council provides advice to AGL on mitigating the effects on our customers of business and regulatory changes.

AGL’s Customer Council is made up of seven leading representatives from community groups across the States that AGL operates within. Council members include representatives from St Vincent de Paul, UnitingCare Wesley, UnitingCare Kildonan, Public Interest Advocacy Council, Queensland Council of Social Services and Consumer Law Advocacy Centre. AGL aims to increase membership of the Customer Council to ten representatives to provide more complete coverage across our customer base.

The Customer Council meets quarterly to discuss the consequences of AGL’s business activities for our customers. Important discussions have taken place with the Customer Council this year to discuss the introduction of the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) to understand the full effects of this on our customers.

The Council’s role is of growing importance as we move into a period of price uncertainty given key government initiatives including the rollout of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure in Victoria, a move to a National Energy Framework, the proposed introduction of the CPRS and the expanded Renewable Energy Target.