Call waiting times rose following lockdown

*The full ratings are at the bottom of this article

Average call waiting times for energy retailers in the period after lockdown increased, with the worst performing supplier coming in at just under 12 minutes.

Citizens Advice’s latest star ratings table covers Q3 2020 after the first national lockdown when restrictions were generally more relaxed.

The star ratings rank domestic retailers according to how good their customer service is, including call centre waiting times, the number of complaints and customer guarantees.

Additionally, for the first time, the charity has collected data about email services which show that suppliers took more than two working days to responded to a third of emails.

As the statutory watchdog Citizens Advice requests retailers to report average call waiting times across the whole quarter, discounting time spent in the phone menu. While suppliers submit their own data the charity also cross references this with its own monitoring.

Of the top five worst performing for call waiting times, three are backed by Ovo Energy.

In Q2 the worst supplier took just over 8 minutes to answer the phone. Yet the latest ratings show that Ovo-backed Boost had the worst call waiting time of all suppliers in Q3 at 710 seconds, or 11 minutes and 50 seconds.

This is not the first time Boost has been picked out as having slow waiting times. A recent Which? study found the supplier took almost 41 minutes on average before answering calls to its customer service line.

Large supplier SSE was the second worst at more than 5 minutes and 40 seconds and Spark Energy was third with 4 minutes 50 seconds.

In response to the ratings, an Ovo spokesperson said the company had been receiving a high volume of calls across all its brands in Q3.

They added: “We’re disappointed not to meet our usual high standards for our customers. During this period, we had a higher number of customers contacting us to ask for support.

“We’re always looking for ways to improve and have planned for additional resources over winter.

“We also offer a call-back service that allows customers to receive a call from one of our team, rather than have to wait. To support those who can’t pay their energy bills because of the effects of Coronavirus we also launched a hardship scheme.”

Of the larger players, British Gas was the slowest at 4 minutes and 17 seconds, Eon was three seconds behind that while Ovo Energy itself had a call wait time of just under four minutes.

Top 5 suppliers in Q3 2020

 Topping the Q3 star ratings was Green which had an overall score of 4.65 stars out of five. M&S Energy rose two places to second while Q2’s highest ranked supplier, So Energy, dropped to the number three spot.

Among the large players Octopus Energy was the highest ranked and came in 4^th place while Eon Energy was the worst rated and plunged from 12^th to 31^st place in Q3.

With a score of 1.9 each Orbit Energy and Enstroga were the worst performing suppliers and came in 35th and 36th place respectively.

*Q3 ratings in full