How Britain’s Independent Energy Suppliers Compare for Customer Service on Twitter
Over 40 independent suppliers have entered the UK’s energy market over the past 5 years encouraged by the Government which has championed competition as the best way to drive down household bills, improve consumer trust and promote more choice.
Most notably in September 2014, First Utility announced it was the first independent utility supplier to reach the milestone of 1m customer accounts for gas and electricity — the equivalent of 550,000 customers, which makes it the seventh-largest energy supplier in the UK and the country’s biggest independent energy provider.
Other entrants into the market have included a number of new energy companies including OVO Energy, Good Energy, Ecotricity, Flow Energy, Spark Energy, the UK’s first energy co-operative The Co-operative Energy and in 2015, Robin Hood Energy the first Local Authority owned energy company since 1948.
According to research from Cornwall Energy, independent suppliers have now increased their market share up 0.6% from five years ago to around 17% with one in six customers now actively switching accounts to smaller, independent suppliers.
In this second part of our insight series looking at the social customer service performance of Britain’s energy market, we take a close look at how the UK’s new breed of independent energy suppliers perform for customer service on Twitter.
The Independent Energy Supplier Social Customer Service Benchmark
(8-week performance comparison from 13 Feb to 10th Apr 2017)
Best Overall Performers
First Utility, came out on top as the best overall independent supplier for customer service on Twitter with the best aggregate score* across inbound volume, response rate, responses under 30 mins and sentiment amongst customers.
The Top 5 Best Performers were First Utility, OVO Energy, Octopus Energy, Robin Hood Energy, and Spark Energy.
Worst Overall Performers
Co-op Energy Help, were the worst performers, followed by Good Energy and FlowEnergy.
Below is the break down on the leaders and laggers across each customer service KPI.
Conclusion
The transformation of the UK’s energy market is still very much in its infancy.
However, with the emergence of new independent suppliers there is now more choice and competition than ever before, but it’s not been without its limitations.
The recent collapse of GB Energy last year, has proven it’s not all been plain sailing for the new kids on the block, exposing the fragility of some of the smaller suppliers in this bullish market.
Together with the continued pressure from the Government to reduce prices, and the increasing rhetoric from the big six as they look to introduce new innovative measures to retain customers, whilst also seeking to challenge the Government’s proposals to enforce more regulation and price capping in the market, one thing is for certain, the times they are a-changing…
Read the first-part of this series looking at the social customer service performance of UK’s energy market.
Reference
For further reference you can view how energy firms perform on customer satisfaction and complaints on the Ofgem data portal below.
For indicative purposes all performance data has been analysed over 8 weeks from (13/02/2017–10/04/2017).
*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
