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Zorlu Enerji, Istanbul, Turkey: Crisis Management in the Times of Earthquake, Zorlu Enerji

Company: Zorlu Enerji
Company Description: Established in 1993, Zorlu Enerji is an energy company that aims to operate on different fields of energy sector providing a global scale integrated service. Zorlu Enerji, which is a subsidiary of Zorlu Enerji companies and the only publicly open company operates on various fields of the sector with an integrated corporate combination including electricity and steam generation and their retail
Nomination Category: Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Crisis Management
2023 Stevie Winner Nomination Title: Crisis Management in the Times of Earthquake - Zorlu Enerji
  1. Which will you submit for this nomination, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length about the nominated campaign or program, OR written answers to the questions for this category? CHOOSE ONE:
    Written answers to the questions
  2. If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the nominated video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video.

     

  3. If you are providing written answers to the questions for this category, you must answer this first question: Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched:

    We declared a state of emergency within the company from the moment of the earthquake since we provide regional gas distribution services in Gaziantep and Kilis, which are among the provinces affected by the earthquake, and as 75% of our Call Center employees work in Adıyaman.

  4. If you are providing written answers to the questions for this category, you must answer this second question: Describe the genesis of the nominated campaign or program: the reasons it was initiated, the challenges it was created to address, the problems it was developed to solve, etc. (up to 250 words):

    Total 244 words used.

    Turkey is at the crossroads of the old continents and among the countries with a first-degree earthquake risk due to its geopolitical location. On February 6, 2023, we faced one of the biggest earthquakes of the century, affecting 11 provinces of Turkey. Two earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.5 occurred nine hours apart. Their epicenter was Kahramanmaraş.

    Under our group, Zorlu Enerji provides integrated energy services globally. It also serves the earthquake-affected cities of Gaziantep, Kilis, and Adıyaman with electricity and natural gas trade and distribution and management of electric vehicle charging station network infrastructure.

    Zorlu Enerji offers natural gas retail and distribution services to nearly 1.5 million customers in Gaziantep and Kilis. In addition, we serve 40 thousand electric vehicle users with the ZES brand, which is Turkey's largest charging station network. And we provide electricity retail and distribution services to nearly 3 million customers in the Central Anatolia region. Our group also operates with call center employees consisting of 150 people in Adıyaman and employs 50 people in Eskişehir.

    Due to this devastating earthquake, unfortunately, 5 of our employees died, 20 were injured under the rubble, and lost many of their relatives. As a result of this disaster, our employees could not work for justified reasons related to shelter, heating, and psychological problems. The fact that 75% of our personnel could not work in the call center and field operations due to the earthquake emerged as a crisis.

  5. If you are providing written answers to the questions for this category, you must answer this third question: Describe the development of the campaign or program: the planning process, the goal setting, the creative and media development, the scheduling, etc. (up to 250 words):

    Total 240 words used.

    Following the earthquake, our first goal was to ensure the safety of our employees, provide uninterrupted service to our customers, and use our human resources efficiently in our gas field operations.

    Actions in gas field operations

    ·       We met the shelter needs of our employees by sending containers to the region without delay.

    ·       To ensure security in Gaziantep and Kilis, we immediately stopped the gas supply from the main line.

    ·       We fixed the fault in the city's main line in 1 week. And within 3 weeks, we supplied gas to every household, business, and regional public institution.

    ·       We collaborated with gas distribution companies serving other regions and increased the number of employees in the field from 25 to 150.

    Actions in call center operations:

    ·       We have created our projections by predicting that our Adıyaman employees will not be able to work for 2 months and that there will be an increase in the number of calls in our region.

    ·       We aimed to create and train a support call center team of 80 people within 3 days and increase the response rate to over 75% in February, which was 95% before the earthquake. We aimed to increase it to over 90% in March and over 95% in April.

    Actions for our employees:

    ·       We gave extra salary support.

    ·       Within our call center, we established an "Earthquake Helpline" serving 24/7. All our employees were contacted individually.

  6. If you are providing written answers to the questions for this category, you must answer this fourth question: Outline the activities and concrete results of this campaign or program since the beginning of 2019. Even if your initiative started before 2021, limit your response to activities and results since the beginning of 2021 only (up to 250 words):

    Total 236 words used.

    We knew that Adıyaman, where we serve our customers 24/7 in electricity and gas distribution fields, and our headquarters in Istanbul were in risky earthquake zones. Therefore, in line with our pre-crisis preparations made with this awareness, we took the following actions:

    ·       We invested 1 million USD in 2021 and established the "Eskişehir Disaster Recovery Center" to back up all our servers in the Zorlu Enerji Data Center in Istanbul,

    ·       We established our call center in Eskişehir, outside the earthquake zone. We formed a think tank team of trained and equipped employees. The think tank team provided step-by-step training on projects, processes, and organization to all first-liner call center employees. To ensure service continuity both technologically and operationally, we have 75% (150 people) of human resources in Adıyaman and 25% (50 people) in Eskişehir, regardless of projects.

    ·       In case of power cuts in our electricity and gas companies, the number of calls can increase to 10 times the standard rate.

    ·       For this reason, we needed to use our customer representative resource, specialized in companies, on the electricity and gas side, but our switchboard system did not support this. Thus, at the beginning of January 2023, we switched to a new switchboard application where we could manage multiple queue management and queue prioritization dynamically. And we put our project live. Thanks to this system, we could effectively manage resources in times of crisis.

  7. You have the option to reference here any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):

    Total 150 words used.

Attachments/Videos/Links:
Crisis Management in the Times of Earthquake - Zorlu Enerji
DOCX Zorlu_Crisis_Management_award_application_ENGr.docx