How Britain's ‘Big Six’ Energy Suppliers Compare for Customer Service on Twitter
The ‘Big Six’ is a term used to describe the UK's largest energy suppliers. They are made up of British Gas, EDF Energy, E.ON UK, npower, ScottishPower and SSE. They currently supply gas and electricity to over 50 million homes and businesses, with over 90% share of domestic customers.
The ‘Big Six’ often come under close scrutiny from the public and the press for their overall dominance of the energy market which has led to noncompetitive energy tariffs and high bills for customers.
In a number of high profile cases, Ofgem the UK’s leading energy regulator has been seen to hand out a series of record breaking fines and penalties to Big Six companies for failings across sales, billing, complaints handling and customer services.
In November 2013 Ofgem agreed to work with the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition and Markets Authority to produce a State of the Market assessment of how well competition in the energy retail market is serving the interests of households and small business in Britain. Findings included increasing distrust of energy suppliers, uncertainty about the costs and benefits of the relationship between the supply businesses and the generation arms of the six largest suppliers, and rising profits with no clear evidence of suppliers reducing their own costs or becoming better at meeting customer expectations.
In June 2014, Ofgem referred Britain’s energy market to the Competitions and Market Authority, (CMA) for further investigation.
The CMA published its final report on 24 June 2016 which contained a series of remedies for Ofgem to carry forward and implement to encourage more competition and modernise the market for the benefit of consumers. This has had a noticeable impact with a number of smaller independent suppliers entering the market, along with new government backed initiatives to roll out smart meters to households and more regulation on billing for fairer, more transparent energy charges.
Most recently in 2017, five of the ‘Big Six' announced price rises to their energy tariffs, a move that has been covered extensively by the British press and one that Ofgem have publicly criticised in defence of consumers.
In this first ever, special edition of a two-part insight series looking at the social customer service performance of Britain’s energy market, we take a close look at how the ‘Big Six’ energy giants perform for customer service on Twitter.
The ‘Big Six’ Social Customer Service Benchmark
(8-week performance comparison from 1st Jan to 28th Feb 2017)
Best Overall Performers
BritishGasHelp, came out as the best overall performer for customer service on Twitter with the best aggregate score* across inbound volume, response rate, responses under 30 mins and sentiment amongst customers.
2nd place was EDF Energy Help, followed by E.On Help, SSE Energy, Scottish Power and lastly NPower Help.
Below is the break down on the leaders and laggers across each customer service KPI.
Conclusion
Over the next few years, Britain’s energy market is going to change rapidly.
Already we are seeing the noticeable effects of a new breed of independent energy supplier enter the market, and together with the roll-out of smart meters to households, and the government’s electricity and gas market reforms, the remedies proposed by the CMA should ensure there are no barriers to stop effective competition bearing down on prices and delivering better improved customer experiences.
With these changes, the ‘Big Six’ are under increasing pressure to meet customers expectations, and improve trust and confidence to remain competitive in a market that is starting to diversify and respond to consumers needs.
Today, with the rise in popularity of digital consumer owned channels such as social media, and the continued growth of messaging, live chat and SMS, customers are able to choose their own digital channels of convenience when interacting with companies.
It is across these digital channels that companies can look to reduce legacy costs of servicing and shift focus on speed and convenience to service customers better and re-position the company in the age of the consumer.
Look out for part-two in this first ever benchmark report on Britain's energy market where we will take a closer look at how independent energy suppliers perform for customer service on Twitter.
Reference
For further reference you can view how energy firms perform on customer satisfaction and complaints on the Ofgem data portal below.
Competition and Markets Authority Report
Energy Market Investigation: Information for Consumers and Businesses.
Ofgem remedies implementation plan.
USwitch guide on the Big Six Energy suppliers.
For indicative purposes all performance data has been analysed over 8 weeks from (01/01/2017 — 28/02/2017).
*Accounts are programmatically scored out of 100 on our performance index across 4 metrics. Inbound mention volumes (25%), Response Rate (25%), Responses under 30 mins (25%) and Sentiment (25%). All metrics are available and updated every 15 mins on HelpHandles.com
