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 October to 31st December 2018 (fourth 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:

• reviewed 3.8 million payment plans this quarter, to ensure your payments meet your forecasted energy use
• simplified the electronic messaging we send to you about your payment plans
  
• identified and rectified a problem that was delaying some customer payments from reaching their accounts
  

What we’re doing:

• reviewing how we communicate and engage with our Direct Debit Customers about their payment plan
• exploring innovative solutions in the digital customer experience to enhance customer understanding of their payment plan
• evaluating the possible outcomes from several potential improvements to our Direct Debit set up journey across different contact channels

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:

• made an improvement which allows 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
  
• 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:

• 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 350,000 smart meters across Britain this quarter
• made our smart metering appointments more flexible by increasing our weekend working patterns
• delivered new planning technology to the Smart Energy Experts allowing for better, more efficient planning and reducing broken appointments
• redesigned our measures to focus on customer outcomes across all areas of the business
• introduced face to face appointment booking to improve the customer journey
  

What we’re doing:

• we’ve started a review of the pre-payment metering process focusing on customer journeys and reducing issues which you may face
• reducing stock and equipment availability issues our customers may encounter by bringing our supply chain of meter stock in-house to work closer with our field leadership team
• continuously reviewing the way we’re structured to ensure it reflects your demands
• improving our management information to give more visibility of customer views & ideas

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