If you want to visit NOTL Hydro, it is simple. Just come to our building at 8 Henegan Road in Virgil and walk on in. We are open from 8:30 am – 4:30 pm every business day. Our customer service staff will greet you and ask how they can be of assistance. No appointment is necessary.
There is a glass barrier between the lobby and the customer service desks, which was installed during the pandemic. It is not too much of a barrier with lots of room below for conversations and for the passing of documents as well as lots of room on top for airflow.
Visitors come for a variety of reasons. Many have a specific electricity issue they need to address (moving, new buildings, late payments, account transfers) but most come to make a payment or to drop off their payment.
If a visitor’s need can be addressed by the customer service staff, it will be dealt with immediately. This will usually be for bill or account related matters. If the issue requires technical staff, then we cannot guarantee immediate service. It will depend on availability. We may be able to deal with it at that time, or a future appointment may be necessary.
Prior to the pandemic, we were getting well over 200 customer visits a month. This frequency is now down to around 150 a month though there was a noticeable spike during the postal strike. I attribute the decline to the change in behaviour brought about by the pandemic. People became more accustomed to doing things online.
I believe giving our customers the ability to visit us in person as this is an important part of our service.
Unfortunately, this belief is not shared by many of my peers in the Ontario electricity industry. More and more of the Ontario LDCs no longer have a walk-in service. An appointment is necessary in some cases and, in others, online or phone services are the only options. Consolidation greatly accelerated this trend (no local service is available in St. Catharines or Thorold) and the pandemic also resulted in some open office closures.
Defenders of not having an open door service claim that this just brings the electricity industry in line with other utilities. I do not agree that this is the case. I will certainly concur that this seems to be the case with natural gas. From what I can see the only way to contact Enbridge is online or by phone. This is definitely not the case with water. Most water operations are run by municipalities and most municipalities have a walk in service for their residents. It is also definitely not the case with telecom services. Canadian telecom companies (Bell, Rogers, Cogeco, Telus, etc.) have lots of centres that you can walk in and meet with no appointment. The difference is that their service centres are located in malls where it is even more convenient.
Having an open door service can add some extra cost. In our case it is not much. Our customer service staff are trained in as many aspects of the service as possible. When they are not dealing with customers, in person or on the phone, they are working on the other billing and collecting processes. Dealing with a customer in person is not much different from a timing perspective than dealing with them over the phone and is much more pleasant. With todays technologies, having a walk in service is more about how working environments and processes are set up rather than about adding additional costs.
I am not taking away from having a robust web-based customer service process. More and more customers expect and demand this. NOTL Hydro is in the process of upgrading our web-based customer-facing system. Rather we should recognize that different customers have different needs and wants and we should respect them all as much as feasible.
In other sectors there is a realization that a well-designed system that includes walk in services as part of the overall service delivery package is the way to go. ServiceOntario is an example of providing open door services on an expanded basis by partnering with other retailers. There is a ServiceOntario location near NOTL Hydro that is part of a convenience store.
NOTL Hydro does not have any plans to discontinue its open door policy. Our customers who visit us at the office thank us on many occasions for this service.