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Ofgem and Which? highlight poor service from energy companies
New research from Which? has found that customer service from the ‘big six’ energy suppliers is among the worst in this year’s annual survey of the performance of the top 100 big brands in the UK. All of the big six languish in the bottom fifth of the table.
Previous Which? research suggested a serious lack of trust in energy companies – just a fifth of people surveyed trust suppliers to charge a fair price for their energy and more than half say it’s difficult to compare the prices of different energy deals.
Meanwhile, Ofgem has urged energy suppliers to significantly improve the way they handle customers’ complaints. Research commissioned by Ofgem highlights that over half of those who had complained (57% of domestic and 52% of small business consumers) were not satisfied with the way their complaint had been handled by their energy supplier. Furthermore in nearly half of cases where the supplier considered the case resolved, the customer did not.
Satisfaction with npower and Scottish Power has fallen particularly markedly, says Ofgem, with only SSE managing to maintain levels of satisfaction found two years ago.
Ofgem has therefore written to the big six CEOs and smaller and independent suppliers about the industry-wide failure to handle complaints to an acceptable standard. Ofgem has highlighted the key areas customers were most concerned about. These include:
- improving the speed of resolving a complaint;
- communicating better with consumers during the complaint process; and
- being more proactive in resolving complaints.
