Customer satisfaction in utilities holds firm amid wider decline

The public’s satisfaction with utility companies has remained largely unchanged, despite a widespread decline in other sectors.

Amid a general decline in scores, utilities have held steady in the latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index, maintaining an average of score of 69.4 out of 100.

Utilities nevertheless remained the lowest ranked of the 13 sectors assessed by the Institute of Customer Service in its biannual survey.

The all-sector average continued to decline in the latest index, dropping by 0.6 points when compared to July’s edition to 76 out of 100. This compares to 77.7 out of 100 in January last year.

Although utilities’ latest score was the same as in July, this already represented a 2.2 point reduction when compared to a year ago and the lowest level in more than eight years. The sector is one of four to have seen a reduction of more than 2 points over the last 12 months, the others being insurance, services and transport.

Water companies did slightly better than energy companies, although both sets saw their scores decline when compared to a year ago.

The average score among water companies fell by 4.1 points year-on-year to 70.7. They lost at least 1 point (out of 10) in each of the four complaint handling measures.

Meanwhile, satisfaction with energy companies fell by 1.9 points to 68.4. They lost at least 1 point (out of 10) in the measures of satisfaction with handling of a complaint and speed of resolving a complaint.

Of the 31 utilities covered by the survey, 18 saw their score drop by two points or more over the last year, while only one – Npower – increased its score by two points of more. The gap between the highest and lowest scoring utilities was 16.7 points.

Utility Warehouse, which was categorised as being in the telecommunications and media sector, also increased its score by 3.4 points year-on-year to 75.4 – the fourth best improvement among all 270 named organisations covered by the survey.

However, there were no utilities whatsoever in 50 highest scoring organisations. UK Power Networks previously came in third in the January 2023 index.

The latest survey also revealed utilities’ customers are the least willing to pay more for better service. With regards to utilities, only 22.7% of respondents said they would prefer an excellent service, even if it costs them more money, down from 29.6% in January 2024. For comparison, the all-sector average fell from 34.7% to 31.3% over the last year.

The UK Customer Satisfaction Index is based on an online survey of more than 15,000 consumers, in which each person can rate up to five sectors in total but only company per sector.

Respondents are asked to rate their experiences with the organisation in the previous three months across 25 metrics. Each metric has a maximum score of 10. The overall score for an organisation represents a weighted average of these scores multiplied by 10.

Each index incorporates two sets of data to create a rolling measure of customers satisfaction. The January 2024 index covers responses collected last year between 6 March and 11 April and between 4 September and 9 October.

The scores for utilities were derived from 7,500 total responses.