We're committed to engaging with the communities we serve, to understand their needs and inform the decisions we make about the future of our networks.  

 

Community partnerships

We're proud to support events and organisations across the regions we operate.

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Powerco Community Fund

Support of up to $5,000 for one-off projects that are focused on connecting communities.

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Consultations

To ensure we deliver solutions that reflect our customers' priorities, we ask the communities we serve for their feedback.

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What we do
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  • Engaging with communities

    Goals and targets

    Here’s what we want to achieve for Pou whakakotahitanga over the short, medium and long-term. 

    Goals and targets FY25

    • Delivering value for customers - Successfully trial varying low voltage network battery configurations, as a proof of concept for deferring higher cost upstream lines investments and to prepare for a future larger scale roll-out.
    • Delivering value for customers - Continue to improve our customers' experience across Powerco's electricity footprint, by a 5-point increase in Customer Satisfaction score. 
    • Delivering value for customers - Maintain net promoter score of >50 to measure our quality of gas customer service and customer experience.
    • Delivering value for customers - 5-point increase in brand and reputation score from the FY24 Quarterly Customer Survey average of 40%.
    • Understanding our customer's needs - Publish annual customer insight information and how this has guided our decision making. 
    • Delivering value for customers - Improve pricing methodology and contributions policy - as reviewed in the Electricity Authority scorecard. 

     

    • Delivering value for customers - Establish and embed a Distributed System Operator (DSO) programme for Powerco where we partner with customers to optimise opportunities for distributed energy resources and other flexibility applications.

  • Engaging with communities

    Goals and targets

    Here’s what we want to achieve for Pou whakakotahitanga over the short, medium and long-term. 

    Goals and targets FY24

    • Improve customers' experience with Powerco, by a 5% increase in Customer Satisfaction score.
    • Maintain net promoter score of +52 to measure our quality of gas customer service and customer experience. 
    • Engage and operate in line with our Te Raa framework – our engagement plan with Tangata Whenua. 
    • Publish annual customer insight information relating to customer views on reliability, price, sustainability, service experience and use/planned uptake of new technologies.

     

    • Prepare for integrated reporting in FY25.

     

  • Engaging with communities

    What we’ve done FY23

    We’ve been making progress towards our goals and targets. Here’s what we worked on between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023.

    What we’ve done FY23

    • Strong relationships across our network are essential for effective delivery of our work programme and understanding customers' future needs and preferences. An initial stakeholder management plan was developed based on community stakeholders identified through our new stakeholder management system.   
    • Our stakeholder management system has been established and is being progressively implemented across Powerco to increase our ability to engage with customers and stakeholders.
    • We are improving our knowledge of customers’ views and preferences through annual and quarterly customer surveys and a pricing survey. Customer insights findings will be published annually from FY24. 
    • The Te Raa framework, our engagement plan with Tangata Whenua is complete and being socialised with Powerco staff.
    • Powerco has a range of community engagements aligned to our sustainability priorities including Replant for Tomorrow, Pokaiwhenua Catchment planting in Putāruru, Taranaki Festival of Lights, Wildbase Recovery in Manawatū, and Greytown's Festival of Christmas.
    • Customer satisfaction surveying and benchmarking was completed in FY23. The metrics needed for an effort index have been identified and introduction of these will continue in FY24. 
    • We achieved an NPS of +52 for customer experience of the gas connection process. While this is below the +58 target and a drop from our 2021 NPS of +55, supply chain issues continue to impact the customer connection experience.
    • With our new Te Raa Framework in place, engagement with Tangata Whenua is planned to step up in FY24.
    • Our unplanned outage page was successfully launched during FY23. Further improvements to the page are planned for FY24.

  • Engaging with communities

    What we’ve done FY22

    We’ve been making progress towards our goals and targets. Here’s what we worked on between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022.

    What we’ve done FY22

    • We undertook 19 engagements for projects with a high impact on customers. This was an 111% increase in engagements from FY21 and helped us understand our customers’ needs and influenced the project outcome.
    • 10 major network projects started in 2022, five of which we consulted with the local communities on.
    • Our sponsorships have been divided into three areas: customer focused, future focused and people focused. We’re aligning these with our sustainability priorities. Learn more
     
    • Our iwi engagement strategy "Te Raa" has been developed and is now being integrated into the business.
    • We participated in the industry campaign “Future Sure,” helping people understood that gas is a viable energy as part of transition to low carbon. A roadmap will be developed in FY23 that will likely involve the adoption of biogas, preparing for hydrogen with green gas as the destination.
    • We continue to explore new and better ways of engaging with our communities including an improved website, greater social media presence, and plans to develop awareness and brand presence in all our customers every year. Our recent restructure puts the customer at the heart of what we do.
    • We’ve gained a better understanding of who in our communities have less resilience to unplanned outages and how we can better support them. The recent refresh of our company values has a strong focus on customers, and coupled with our Te Raa framework, will ensure we better service these customers groups.
     

     

    • The creation of self-service tools for customers and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is on hold while other systems such as the stakeholder engagement hub are being developed.
    • Customer satisfaction measures were not introduced in FY22 but will be developed and data collected during FY23 to establish a baseline.
    • We focused our research on pricing and customer satisfaction measures. Over time, we will look to dive deeper into our relationships with our communities for more sophisticated insights.
    • A new platform was introduced that helps us track the size and scope of our relationships with stakeholders. This foundational work will help us develop and improve our Community and Stakeholder Engagement Programme. Learn more
    • During FY22, COVID continued to hamper our efforts to engage with our gas customers through home shows. This will be renewed in FY23.

Supporting customers to be energy efficient

Our target: To implement a support plan for vulnerable customer groups by the 2023 financial year.

Our mahi: We partnered with WISE Charitable Trust to provide free coaching for households at risk of energy hardship.

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The pillars of our work