When I’m not writing crime novels, I like to plot better customer outcomes.

I’ve done quite a lot of different jobs over the years before I joined E.ON Next. These included teaching maths, working for an investment bank, developing and testing trading software and even looking after the marketing for a local arts centre. 

Then in 2002, I decided it was time to follow my dream of being a novelist. So I signed up for an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University to properly learn the craft. I released my first crime novel in 2006, and have since had nine more of my books published under my pen name, Nicola Monaghan. While writing is my first love, I think it’s also important to pass on what you’ve learned, so after leaving Uni I taught creative writing; first at the University of Nottingham and then at Leicester’s De Montfort University. 

Every life story has a few plot twists however, and after a few personal problems and bereavements, I was eventually offered voluntary severance by the university I was working for. At that point I realised it was time for a change and a new challenge, so I decided to finally start working towards a PhD by enrolling at the University of Nottingham. 

I really needed part-time work to support this though, so when I saw the job of Energy Specialist advertised at E.ON Next, it seemed like fate. I knew a few people who worked here and decided to apply, as I thought I’d enjoy the work and that it would be a suitable role while I was studying. I never imagined that I would go on to find a whole new career path here and a job that I would enjoy far more than any of the ones I’d done previously! 

While this felt like a whole new chapter in my life, the fact is that the energy industry is a big part of my backstory. My Dad was first an electrician and then a quantity surveyor. He helped to build power stations and I was even born in a National Coal Board house. Dad often took me to work when I was young and once even let me help him rewire a factory. 

He also gave me the job of reading our meters at home when I was about three years old, which seems to have had a lasting impact on me. That’s because when I started at E.ON Next I was surprised to realise that I knew straight away how to read an old-fashioned dial meter and was able to explain it to my training group, even though I don’t really remember my Dad teaching me how to do it. Perhaps that nostalgia is part of the reason I loved working at E.ON Next right from the start, even after everybody had gotten over my prodigious meter-reading skills. 

Being a bit of a maths geek, I took to our Kraken billing system as soon as I joined the team. 

I then worked on a digital secondment for a while, giving feedback on Billie - our interactive billing and customer engagement tool - and working with graphic interface designers on initial planning for our Direct Debit visualisation tools. In fact, I’ve found lots of fascinating opportunities here, both to try different things and to progress in my role.

After my digital secondment, I spent some time on the Notts Vulnerability team, working with some of our most vulnerable customers. Having helped nurse my Dad for several years after he had a stroke, making sure that these customers are looked after properly and sympathetically feels incredibly important to me.

I’m now working on one of our centralised Escalated Complaints teams. I love the challenge of unravelling the often complex problems we have to deal with in this space. I also get to work with important stakeholders, such as the Citizens Advice Bureau’s Extra Help Unit and Members of Parliament working on behalf of their constituents. Even though this means I often have to deal with our most distressed customers, it’s very satisfying to unravel their problems and bring their issues to a successful conclusion. 

Continuing to work with some of our most vulnerable customers allows me to make a real difference to people’s lives, which is incredibly important to me. And thanks to the support and flexibility I get from E.ON Next, I can still find the time and energy to work on my latest crime novel and my PhD on days off. Long story short, I feel very fortunate that I’ve achieved the work/life balance to do that, not to mention having a genuinely enjoyable day job that helps me to plot the best possible outcomes for our most vulnerable customers.