Don’t underestimate consumer interest, says Good Energy

Green independent energy supplier has warned utilities not to “underestimate consumers” and think that just because it is utilities that consumers are “not interested”.

Speaking to delegates at the Utility Week Congress in Birmingham, Good Energy chief executive Juliet Davenport said: “I think we spend too much time telling everybody that the energy industry is really complicated, it’s not that complicated, and customers appreciate it when we say we are going to be investing in this infrastructure so that you can have security of supply.”

Davenport also said a letter sent by Good Energy to its customers informing them of a price rise was actually appreciated by customers because “we did a lot of work in explaining what the bill was made up by”.

“We actually got lots of compliments about putting customers prices up, so my personal view is don’t dumb it down.”

“If you open the door to consumers, they are much more interested in what we do than we realise. And actually it should be us opening the door wider and inviting them in to what we do, and achieving much better customer engagement as a result of that.”

Davenport said the market needed to be challenged from the key areas being regulated and where policy was being implemented, such as the environment or customer service, if disengaged consumers were to be engaged.

“We can engage customers much more with what we are trying to do as organisations in terms of what we have to do to provide power to them, what we have to do in terms of looking after the environment, and what we have to do in terms of providing services to them. I think that’s a real missed opportunity. 

“We must not underestimate consumers in the utility sector, and we do so at our peril, because customers then feel in the dark.”