A tipping point for trust?

Jane Gray ponders the potential of the Competition and Markets Authority investigation into the energy market to ease the sector's trust troubles.

The issue of trust in energy suppliers is inextricably linked to the CMA’s investigation of the energy market.

While restoring public trust is not the primary purpose of the investigation, it is certainly the logical upshot that optimists hope will ensue, should a clean bill of health be given to the various market mechanisms under scrutiny. After all, as PA Consulting Group’s Jonathon Hogg reminded Utility Week readers in our February Trust special report, “transparency and accountability are the keys to trust and reputation”.

However, although the CMA’s investigation promises to make the energy market more transparent, cynics are more than ready to cast doubt on its ability to restore trust in energy companies – or the utilities industry more widely.

The sector has been badly damaged by large-scale billing blunders and scandals over pricing, margins and dividends. Consequently, it remains a laggard across a range of trust barometers and indexes and at a Utility Week Live roundtable debate in April, a group of industry leaders were openly pessimistic about whether the CMA’s findings will have any positive impact on customer perceptions of the industry. 

It’s easy to see why. It’s not just utilities that are suffering from low trust today. All businesses, especially large businesses, have been tarred to some extent by an apparently unstoppable swell of scepticism about the value they add to society. In 2014 a You Gov study conducted for business lobby group the CBI found that just 53 per cent of people in the UK thought business was good for society and 33 per cent staunchly believed that businesses are purely motivated by money. Meanwhile, Edelman’s 2015 Global Trust Barometer verifies that trust in business around the world has once again declined over the past year.

This makes disheartening reading for those working hard within utility companies to provide consistently strong customer service and value for money, and it questions the CMA’s ability to restore trust in suppliers.

So is mistrust in utilities inevitable? Happily, the most recent results from the Institute of Customer Service’s UK Customer Satisfaction Index suggest not. July’s publication of this biannual index showed trust in utilities gradually increasing – against a trend of flatlining trust across all sectors.

Perhaps the next index will bring news that the utilities industry is no longer 13th out of the 13 sectors measured, but it will take hard work, as Andrew MacMillan, former head of customer service at John Lewis, told us earlier this year. “It’s worth remembering that perception can be stronger than reality. To change a widespread negative perception you will have to communicate a positive action a disproportionately high number of times,” he said.

This blog originally appeared as part of a longer feature in Utility Week. To download a pdf of full article as if appeared in the magazine, click here.