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AGL’s Staying Connected program is designed to maintain access to energy for customers experiencing financial hardship. At 30 June 2009, 12,120 customers (corresponding to 20,293 contracts, compared to 17,739 the previous year) were on the Staying Connected program.
AGL has processes in place to prevent disconnection, and offers a range of other assistance mechanisms to Staying Connected customers. AGL offers tailored payment plans adjusted to suit the payment capabilities of customers, and to help them access available government assistance schemes, such as capital grants programs.
Energy audits are available to Staying Connected participants in Victoria and South Australia through our partnerships with UnitingCare Kildonan and Mission Australia respectively. Energy audits are one component of a suite of assistance mechanisms that AGL utilise to help customers return to a sustainable financial position. The audits help customers identify methods to both reduce energy consumption and assist them with making payments against all of their essential services, including their energy usage. The number of audits completed decreased over the 2008/09 period across both Victoria and South Australia. The provision of audits is a key component of the Staying Connected program and intends to renew focus on delivery of audits for our customers in the coming year.
AGL recognises the importance of helping our customers during difficult financial times. One of the challenges with the Staying Connected program is the early identification of customers who are having difficulty in making payments. Whilst this is a priority to AGL, the success over the 2008/09 period was not high, with customers entering the program with higher levels of debt than what we would prefer to see. Higher levels of debt result in greater difficulty for customers entering the program to return to a sustainable financial position. AGL will look to address the timeliness of identification in 2009/10.
AGL uses two key performance indicators to measure the success of Staying Connected, namely the time it takes to return customers to a sustainable financial position, and the number of times each participant has joined the Staying Connected program.
29% of current Staying Connected participants have been on the program for four or more years indicating long-term hardship. This is a higher than normal level. AGL will aim to reduce this over the coming year through targeted management of these customers.
At the end of 2008/09, approximately 28% of Staying Connected participants were customers returning to the program. Whilst we believe that this is a high level, further investigation with our community partners to set targets will be undertaken during 2009/10 to enable AGL to track progress in this area.
AGL has commenced discussions with the Customer Council regarding the impacts on our customers of increases in energy prices. These increases have the potential to disproportionately affect those who are least able to deal with increased costs.
AGL encourages shared responsibility between our customers, the government and AGL for those customers who will be most disadvantaged by price increases.
AGL continues to supply customers with Braille and large font size bills. In addition, we utilise customer interpretation services to provide access for customers who are vision-impaired or who do not speak English.
