Kenya Power last night started replacing existing customer account numbers with new ones following the introduction of a new customer management system.
The new numbers will be issued until Monday at 4 pm for customers in Nairobi region where the system upgrade is being first introduced. Customers will be notified of their new account numbers via an SMS.
“To enhance customer service delivery, Kenya Power will be upgrading the customer management system,” the power distributor said in a public notice.
Among other benefits, the new system makes it possible for customers to read their own metres, generate their own bill and then pay from the comfort of their homes.
The self-metre reading initiative for post-paid customers means that Kenya Power metre readers will no longer visit homes and no manual bills will be sent to customers going forward.
Customers will only be required to read their own metres, key in the new unit readings and then the system will generate the bill automatically based on the previous recorded units.
This will eliminate instances where customers are sent bills based on estimates only to be slapped with shocking bills afterwards when the metres are actually read.
The system upgrade is initially being rolled out in the Nairobi region before other nine regions across the country with the target completion date set for July next year.
Kenya Power spokesman Johnstone Ole Turana said a pilot project in Ruaraka undertaken over a two-month period returned a 98 percent success rate paving way for the mass rollout that kicked off yesterday. With the new system in place, bill payment will be updated immediately unlike the current situation where it takes over 24 hours before payments done through third parties are captured and reflected in the Kenya Power system. This late capture of payment has in some instances seen customers who settled their bill late disconnected from power.
The new system also introduces new bill payment channels such as use of credit and debit cards. In addition, the upgrade introduces self-service modules where customers can apply for power connection, query bills, check statements, download and print bill statements, check consumption patterns and trends and lodge queries on power supply among others.
Turana said metre readers will not be rendered jobless since they will still be needed as technicians to do periodic metre checks to ensure zero tampering.