How we’re doing with your energy complaints

We take every complaint seriously because we want to give you excellent service. So we’re working hard to understand where we are going wrong so we can fix the issues that are driving complaints.

Our latest report is for the first quarter of 2018 (1st January to 31st March 2018).

The complaints we’ve included are from our residential energy customers, as well as the customers we have through our partnership brand, Sainsbury’s Energy.^[1]

Payments

Lots of things affect how many complaints we get about payments such as seasonality, tariff changes, and how we explain payment plans. So we’re doing everything we can to make things simpler.

What we’ve done:

• completed 3.9m reassessments of payment schemes this quarter to ensure that our customers’ payments will meet their anticipated consumption
• made changes to ensure that you can get any overpayments refunded in a timely manner when you leave us
• improved our systems to make it easier for you to make card payments to us

What we’re doing:

• fixing some technical issues that had prevented us from setting up the payment plan that you wanted
• reviewing the correspondence issued at certain events to ensure that it is clear and easy to understand
• looking at how we can embrace new technology to offer payment solutions that are more suited to your needs

Billing

We’re always looking at the reasons why our customers are unhappy about billing so that we can figure out how to fix the issues. The volume of meter reading and billing complaints continues to fall due to improvements to our processes. We now have the highest number of customers with accurate reading on their account in the last 12 months than ever before.

What we’ve done:

• invested in texting to improve the ease of customers in sending us their readings. This has enabled us to send an accurate bill to more customers each month
• enabled the ability to offer electricity special meter reading appointments within 4 days – a reduction of 17 days from 2015

What we’re doing:

• making a change which will allow us to text more customers and ask for meter readings which will mean more accurate bills based on what our customers send us
• reviewing our end to end process whereby a smart meter doesn’t work to ensure we can still bill the customer to an accurate meter reading
• continuing to review our Direct Debit process from a customer perspective to improve the experience

Metering

We always do our best to fix problems our customers have with their meters as we know that this can cause a lot of inconvenience.

What we’ve done:

• installed 353,218 smart meters across Britain in the quarter
• made more smart metering appointments available to meet expected customer demand including trials at weekends and increased capacity using NPS data and customer insight as the driver
• delivered new planning technology to the Smart Energy Experts allowing for better more efficient planning and reducing broken appointments

What we’re doing:

• commenced a programme to improve delivery of smart meters to our customers. This should make installation of smart meters quicker and help reduce complaints further
• continuing to upgrade customers’ existing smart meters with the technology which will ensure that they will work to enable customers to move to other suppliers and keep the benefits of their current smart meter
• reviewing our operating model to ensure it reflects the demands of our customers
• improving our ways of working by using improved data analytics and operational modelling
• made changes which make it easier for our Smart Energy Experts to provide energy efficiency advice

Customer Service

We strive to get things right for our customers first time.

What we’ve done:

• delivered additional training to our agents to ensure we’re quick to identify customer complaints, and resolve things promptly and effectively
• delivered call messaging technology to more of our agents so they’re able to use this as an additional channel to effectively interact with our customers

What we’re doing:

• continuing to develop a programme to enhance the way we handle customer enquiries and complaints, so we can resolve things as quickly as possible
• looking at ways to use technology to ensure our customers can speak to the right person, straightaway, so their enquiry can be dealt with efficiently

Communication

It’s important that we communicate well with our customers to ensure we get things right.

What we’ve done:

• tested new technology and innovative ways to get in touch with our customers in order to resolve their complaints. We’ve seen some positive results so we’ve extended these trials, and are continuing to test and monitor the results

What we’re doing:

• always looking at further ways we can improve the correspondence and bills we issue as we want to make sure they’re clear and easy to understand
• improving the experience our customers have when they visit our website
• reviewing how we receive and respond to emails from our customers so we can improve this process