How we’re doing with your energy complaints

We strive to give you excellent service which is why we take every complaint seriously. We use feedback from complaints to improve the level of service that we can provide and prevent issues from occurring in the first place.

Our latest report is from 1st July to 30th September 2018 (third quarter).

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 the number of 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 for you.

What we’ve done:

• completed 4.7m reassessments of Direct Debits this quarter to ensure that your payments will meet your anticipated energy use
• improved system reliability to help stop problems when you try to set up a Direct Debit with us
  
• improved our systems to make it easier for you to make card payments to us
  

What we’re doing:

• improving your self-serve experience to give you more ways to interact with us and manage your account
• reviewing our Direct Debit reassessments to allow more stability in your instalment amount making it easier for you to manage your finances
• looking at ways that we can make our Direct Debit set up process more straightforward for you

Billing

We’re always looking at the reasons why you may be 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 more customers with accurate readings on their account in the last 12 months than ever before.

Each year British Gas takes part in a voluntary Billing Audit managed by Energy UK to show compliance with the Billing Code in 5 key areas. This year we achieved a Silver Award. This is a fantastic achievement and is a 27% improvement on our 2016 result.

What we’ve done:

• invested in text messaging to make it easier for you to send us your meter readings. This has enabled us to send an accurate bill to more customers each month
  
• created the ability to offer you special electricity 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 of you, our customers and ask for meter readings which will mean more accurate bills based on what you send us
• reviewing our end to end process when a smart meter doesn’t work to ensure we can still bill you 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 you have with your meters as we know that this can cause a lot of inconvenience.

What we’ve done:

• installed more than 360,000 smart meters across Britain this quarter
• started installing smart meters for our gas only customers
• made our smart metering appointments more flexible to meet your needs including trials at weekends
• delivered new planning technology to the Smart Energy Experts allowing for better, more efficient planning and reducing broken appointments
• redesigned our reward structure to focus on customer outcomes
• reduced appointment lead times to support a better customer experience
  

What we’re doing:

• we’ve started a programme to improve delivery of smart meters to you. This should make installation of smart meters quicker and help reduce complaints further
• continuing to upgrade existing smart meters with the technology which will ensure that they will work to enable you to move to other suppliers and keep the benefits of your current smart meter
• reviewing the way we’re structured to ensure it reflects your demands
• improving our ways of working by using improved data analytics and operational modelling
• reviewing our processes to reduce repeat calls to customers that have been contacted several times already

Customer Service

We strive to get things right for you first time.

What we’ve done:

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

What we’re doing:

• continuing to develop a programme to enhance the way we handle your enquiries and complaints, so we can resolve things as quickly as possible
• looking at ways to use technology to ensure you can speak to the right person, straight away, so your enquiry can be dealt with efficiently
• using new tools to understand what you want and need from us, and how we can constantly look to improve the service we provide
  

Communication

It’s important that we have good communication with you to make sure we get things right.

What we’ve done:

• tested new technology and innovative ways to get in touch with you so we can resolve your 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 that you have when you visit our website
• reviewing how we receive and respond to emails from you so we can improve this process