On average around 69% of billpayers say they are happy with their provider. Significantly higher than that average is Octopus, scoring 84%.  Suppliers with lower satisfaction results were EDF Energy, on 61%, OVO Energy on 61%. and Scottish Power on 62%.

A pool of more than 3,700 home energy users were asked last September to rate their supplier first for overall satisfaction, and then for its customer service delivered.   The regulator commissioned the research in collaboration with Citizens Advice.

For customer service, suppliers scored on average 62%.  Octopus again beat that industry benchmark, achieving 76% for its service.

Again EDF, on 54%, Scottish Power on 55%, and OVO on 57%, all came up short, serving their customers worse than rivals.

Top reasons given by customers unhappy with levels of service they received were

• not being able to contact their supplier at the time they needed (37%),
• not feeling they were being listened to (34%) and
• length of time it took to resolve their query (34%)

Overall satisfaction with customer service as reported by real users fell, the regulator notes, from 66% at the end of 2022 to 62% in the latest research.

Ofgem says it will continue to publish its supplier-specific data as part of its commitment to improve transparency in helping customers make more informed decisions on supplier choice.

In December the regulator announced new rules designed to improve customer service standards, including requirements for suppliers to be easier to contact and provide proactive support for vulnerable customers, and people struggling to pay their bills.

Under these rules, energy companies are already required to prominently display their Citizens Advice Star Rating for customer service satisfaction.

Tim Jarvis, Ofgem’s director general of retail, commented:   “Transparency is crucial to allow energy users to make informed choices, and we are determined to give customers the information they need so they can choose a supplier that works for them.

“We have already seen improvement to fix issues we identified in our deep-dive review of customer service in 2022.

“This latest data is a reminder that there is still work to be done, and publishing company-specific data adds another incentive for suppliers to keep pace with their rivals – or risk losing customers.”

Early last year the regulator’s Market Compliance Review into customer service raised severe or moderate weaknesses at twelve energy retailers.   It says suppliers have listened, with all making noticeable improvements.

The post Ofgem names best and worst home energy suppliers for first time appeared first on theenergyst.com.

The energy regulator last year examined suppliers’ service performance in a bid to drive up standards. Among weaknesses at many, it found E.ON Next was the worst, due to its long call waiting times and high rates of calls abandoned.

Between October and December 2022, the review found E.ON Next struggled to cope with customer contacts.  Average waits on the retailer’s amusingly named “help line” averaged 18 minutes. Unacceptable call drop-offs mis-managed by E.On Next meant 50 percent of customer calls failed entirely to connect with a competent agent.

Over 500,000 customers were potentially affected, Ofgem said today.

After Ofgem’s action, E.ON Next says it has taken steps to re-gain its customers’ goodwill.  On-hold times are now cut to five minutes or under, a step hailed by the supplier as progress.  Inbound callers’ odds of E.On Next dropping them before a conversation, now stand at below 10 percent, a low standard on which the supplier again prides itself.

E.ON Next will pay every affected customer £8 in compensation, using up 80% of Ofgem’s fine.  The remaining £1 million goes into the regulator’s Voluntary Redress Fund, which supports energy consumers in vulnerable situations, as well as investments in carbon cutting and other innovations.

Cathryn Scott, Ofgem’s director for enforcement, said: “This shows our determination to stand up for the rights of consumers and drive up standards.

“The very least that a customer should expect of their supplier is for them to pick up the phone to them in a timely way. The levels of service that we discovered at E.ON Next during the period of review were unacceptable.

“As the energy regulator, our purpose is to protect energy consumers and this action serves as a reminder to all suppliers that they must ensure that their customers are able to contact them quickly and easily when they need to. This is particularly important during this time of volatile energy prices when many households are struggling with their bills.”

E.on Next is the worst censured of 18 energy firms caught in Ofgem’s latest series of reviews.  They found “moderate” call handling weaknesses at 11; British Gas, E Gas, & Electricity, EDF, Good Energy, Outfox the Market, OVO, Scottish Power, SO Energy, Utilita, Utility Warehouse and Tru Energy.

Minor weakness were found at five more: Bulb, Ecotricity, Green Energy, Shell and Octopus. No supplier had ‘no weaknesses’ at all.

E.on Next’s ineptitude is mirrored beyond the utility sector.   The Institute of Customer Service calculated in February that continuing corporate hypocrisy about Britons’ “calls being important” to providers of energy, water & other services costs the nation a staggering £11.4 Billion every month.

Reacting to Ofgem’s fining, the Institute’s CEO Jo Causon commented:

“This is a stark reminder why businesses and boards must prioritise customer service. Getting things right in the first instance should be the priority, but when issues arise, or customers have queries, they must be able to get through to the right person in a reasonable timeframe.”

“This takes time, planning and investment to get right. Businesses need to ensure they’ve got the frontline staff in place and equip them with the support, training, systems and data to deal with different customer enquiries as efficiently as possible.”

The post E.On Next fined £5 million for wasting half a million customers’ time appeared first on theenergyst.com.

At a cost reported at over £60,000, the nation‘s backbone operator this week asked coal-fired generators to warm up furnaces in case additional power is needed during the current heatwave to run air-conditioning systems.

Over last winter, the NG paid furnace operators up to £395 million to ensure a coal-fired reserve, guarding Britain against cold snaps.

But renewables generator-supplier Octopus says its experience indicates a better, dramatically cheaper route to meet demand. Consumers incentivised to shift loads by a few hours could, if scaled up from the supplier’s recent trials, have achieved the same effect for only £100 million, or a quarter of NG’s bill, the supplier argues.

In new analysis, Octopus extrapolates that as much 2.1GW of consumer-provided flex can be obtained nationwide, if bill-payers are educated and paid to provide it.

The paper analyses results from ‘Saving Sessions,’ Octopus’ own flex scheme. It recruited 700,000-plus Octopus customers with smart meters to take part over last winter.

Together, the customer base shifted 1.9GWh of electricity out of peak times, the equivalent of stopping about 2 million washing machine runs.

Scaling up Octopus’ results to all 17.3 million UK homes with smart meters would shift over 2.1GW of demand enough – argues the supplier –  to supplant coal as a backup source.

The top 5% of ‘Saving Sessions’ participants earned over £40 during the trial.  Around 96% of customers surveyed said they’re willing to participate in repeat schemes.

Thousands of customers chose to donate their earnings from the trials to ‘Octo Assist’, Octopus Energy’s financial hardship fund. Together they donated more than £170,000 to customers struggling with their bills.

Alex Schoch, Octopus’ head of flexibility, commented: “We’ve shown the potential of consumer flexibility. Now it’s time to roll it out across the UK and end our reliance on expensive, dirty coal power.

“Over the winter we saw how our future green grid would work. We’ve proven that households can balance the grid and be part of the movement away from fossil fuels.

“We’re still in a cost of living crisis. It’s crazy to pay coal power plants when we could pay hard-pressed customers instead.”

Read Octopus’ white paper here.

The post Cancel coal-ture: “Pay customers, not coal burners”, Octopus tells NG appeared first on theenergyst.com.

Employees are spending nearly 20% of their time at work – an average of 4.8 working days every month –  in chasing providers across 13 consumer-facing industries to resolve account management problems, according to the latest six-monthly survey of 10,000 consumers, conducted as the UK Consumer Satisfaction Index.

No sector in the 13 ranks worse than power & water retailing in wasting Brits’ time, keeping them hanging on phone lines.  Late 2022’s rating is the sector’s lowest since July 2015.

Glowing exceptions to the sector’s rule of mediocrity and time-wasting are UK Power Networks – which dropped from first spot across all sectors in July 2022 – and Northern Powergrid.  The two DNOs are the highest rated organisations among utilities providers.

In 2015, the Office for National Statistics estimated that UK workforce productivity lagged G7 rivals by as much as 20%.

The malady continues to worry Westminster & Whitehall. Far from curing it, Brexit has if anything made it worse.

Overcoming low productivity was among reasons behind Liz Truss’ un-funded ‘growth-at-any-cost’ spasm, during her 45-day premiership.   In 2012, Truss had been among contributors to the notorious “Britannia Unchained” pamphlet, which condemned British workers for their supposed laziness.

Before its closure in 2017, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills attributed the cause to bad British management, and bosses’ inability to organise work and working practices efficiently.

The Institute of Customer Service has run the UK Consumer Satisfaction Index every six months since July 2008.

Its latest report is based on 45,000 survey responses and completed online questionnaires relating to customer experience within specific organisations. The responses are provided by over 10,000 individual customers.

Nearly one in four respondents, or 23.3% of customers, experienced a problem with a power or water company in the past six months. That’s up 2.5 points on last year, and 6.8 percentage points more than the UK all-sector average.

Across all supply sectors, headline UK customer satisfaction has fallen by 0.7 points year on year, to 77.7, out of a maximum possible 100.

The utilities sector’s UKCSI score of 71.7 is 2.8 points lower than January 2022, and six points below the UK all-sector average, the tracking survey finds.

Leading high-level causes of problems in the energy sector are quality or reliability, suitability and availability of goods and services, meaning trust is being eroded.

Predictably after eighteen months of eyewatering tariff rises, the energy sector’s reported predominance of problems concerned with cost is the highest of any sector.

Jo Causon, CEO of the Institute of Customer Service, said: “It is perhaps unsurprising given the volatility in the energy market that satisfaction in the sector is so low.

“But today’s results are a timely reminder that we cannot keep taking a short term, fire-fighting business approach. The productivity hit of staff spending nearly a day a week handling problems cannot be overstated. As consumer finances are increasingly squeezed, taking the time to lay the foundations of an effective, long-term service experience will be key to pulling the nation out of recession.”

The UKCSI’s top rated utilities organisations for January 2023 are:

Across all 13 industrial sectors, the top 10 rated organisations in January 2023 were:

The post Boost UK productivity? Get suppliers – including utilities – to stop wasting employees’ time appeared first on theenergyst.com.