Delivering ‘PHD level customer service’ in the energy sector

Long gone are the days when energy companies merely supplied power, Matthew Vickers believes. Today retailers are providing some of the most sophisticated types of customer service available, which the Energy Ombudsman chief executive describes as akin to social work. Speaking to Utility Week, Vickers explains why we must tread carefully when making comparisons with other industries, his caution around increasing digitsation and his fears about “empathy” becoming the latest corporate buzzword.

“I think everyone is coming into the second wave with more experience than we had in the first, which is good, but they are probably feeling more like they are running on fumes.”

Following Utility Week’s initial lockdown interview with Matthew Vickers, the Ombudsman chief has seen first-hand how an emotionally drained workforce has coped in dealing with an equally anxious consumer base.

Vickers is in charge of an organisation responsible for dealing with thousands of complaints about energy suppliers and understands better than most the need for empathy. Yet he has grave concerns suppliers will too often bandy around the word “empathy” without truly appreciating its meaning.

“I’m worried empathy is going to become the next greenwashing, the latest fashionable thing, the latest corporate buzzword. I’m seeing people using words like empathy, compassion and care but when you scratch the surface, you realise it’s not what they are talking about at all. They are talking about multiplying the channels they have got or making channels more effective.

“That is an operations management, efficiency mindset. It is not a care, compassion, empathy, human contact mindset and that is my worry, that we are in an industry where finance and investment and infrastructure is so critically important right now that that means we will end up with too much of this; that the reasons given for digitisation will tend to be rooted in finance, payback and investment.”

The Ombudsman chief has often spoken about how the low carbon economy will need to be a high trust one and believes digitisation will be one of the most important pillars underpinning this. Yet he has concerns about the aims of companies looking to reduce costs through increased digital services, that they may not have a nuanced and empathetic approach towards their customers.

“When you look at where people are building new platforms, or where they are overhauling billing systems or forms of customer engagement, we will find out over the next couple of years if those overhauls were centred on customers or on building customer centred digital approaches.

“If they are, fantastic, that will really help with customer engagement. But it’s possible some of them were starting with a different end in mind; reducing opex, cutting costs, taking out ‘unnecessary contact’.”

There are huge expectations on energy suppliers to go above and beyond the realms of normal customer service which Vickers believes presents great emotional challenges for both sector workers and their customers, especially during the pandemic.

He sees an “explosive combination” of an anxious customer base that is under financial and emotional pressure and customer service teams that are similarly anxious, marking a huge leadership challenge.

“So much of tackling vulnerability well is about being able to hear the unsaid and getting that full picture, getting people to open up about what’s really going on, where they need help, as early as possible. That is a real skill requiring high levels of listening, empathy and high standards of customer service and we are going to be asking our people to do that at a point where they don’t have all of the support they’d normally have and are burnt out and running on empty.”

He continues: “One of the things that has struck me is the industry as a whole has made great strides over the last 5-10 years about trying to put customers more at the centre rather than being all about engineering big pieces of kit. It’s come a long way but if you look at the Institute of Customer Service, where they look at different sectors and the standard of customer service, utilities as a whole historically have and continue to come towards the bottom compared with some other industries.”

He contrasts his previous experience of the level of service in the food retail sector to that of utilities. He believes the two are worlds apart, adding customer service in the utilities sector is “not far off social work”, likening what companies do as “PHD level customer service”.

“We are talking about taking that responsibility for looking after someone, for realising that the reason they can’t pay might stretch to all sorts of other issues that need be thought about. The level of skill involved in that is not customer service 101 stuff that’s PHD level customer service.”

Vickers believes the fact utilities are seen to underperform needs to be balanced with the level of expectation and complexity, as well as the need for emotional depth, subtlety and nuance in conversations with customers is far more elevated in utilities than other sectors.

“It’s a world apart from 10-15 years ago where this was really about account management, not really about customer service. This is not about account management now, this is much more like you might see in a public service environment. That has different requirements in terms of how you support your people, leadership, what matters for boards, regulators and so on, I think it’s something we have to recognise and invest in.”

A winter ready sector

Utility Week last spoke to the Ombudsman boss as the first month of lockdown was coming to an end. He was quick to praise the sector’s swiftness to agree a series of principles with the government to ensure the most vulnerable customers were kept on supply. While he continues to remain optimistic, he does worry that fatigue is setting in at a crucial moment.

Over the summer the Energy Ombudsman saw fewer complaints year-on-year coming through the period between May and July before they began to pick up again. Now the overall picture is that complaint volumes are around 10-15 per cent up on last year. Ombudsman Services extended some of the timelines given to companies to put together case files to enable them to better deal with the crisis, which Vickers believes is one of the reasons behind the current increase.

As the sector moves towards the winter and with more people spending longer in their homes, there is an expectation that an increased number of consumers will face issues surrounding affordability.

Vickers adds: “Certainly from the companies I speak to, all of us expect there will be an increased demand, particularly around that area of affordability, it’s hard to see how there won’t be. But no one is quite seeing it crystalised yet. The hope might be that it’s not going to be as bad as we think. But it is hard to imagine that, very simply, at a broad level there’s reduced household income at a time when you would expect usage to be higher.”