New jobs at successful call centre

An initial 30 people were employed by Orchard Energy when they opened the call centre at their head office on Park Road in Elland in July.

The call centre is part of a five-year contract won by Orchard Energy’s sister company, Providor, both part of the Lakehouse Group, to provide smart meter services for one of the ‘Big Six’ energy companies. The remit of the call centre is to deliver the UK-wide smart meter telesales services.

In its first month, the call centre has exceeded its appointment booking target by 17 per cent. It has also surpassed a target to secure 85 per cent capacity of engineers’ time, instead scheduling 95 per cent of its capacity.

Due to smart meters becoming more prevalent across the country, further recruitment will now take place.

It is hoped 53 million digital gas and electricity meters in 30 million premises by 2020 across Wales, Scotland and England. There have already been 3.6 million installations in Great Britain so far.

Smart meters allow consumers and smaller businesses to monitor their gas and electricity more closely and help them understand their bills and what’s costing them, and will have a direct impact on their bill at the end of the month.

Orchard Energy’s operations director, Colette Costello, said: “The success of the call centre in its first month is phenomenal. All staff have exceeded our expectations.

“Consumers are becoming more savvy with energy consumption and how they can save money, and smart meters are being seen as a logical solution to monitor that.”