Quarterly Performance Reporting

We’re the first to admit we’re far from perfect. But we see complaints as a necessary and valuable feedback mechanism so that we can keep getting better and better. Our CEO Greg likes to use the analogy of when we Brits go for dinner. The chips are soggy, the main is stone cold, but as soon as the server comes to ask if everything is ok we lie and say it’s all good. The customers leave and never return and the restaurant stays rubbish and can’t understand why they are making less and less money.

We don’t want to be that rubbish restaurant and that’s why it’s so important for us to listen when we do get it wrong. Yes it might be uncomfortable, but we’d rather you told us straight and give us a chance to fix it rather than leave still hungry!

How did we do last quarter with customer satisfaction:

We ask our customers for feedback after every interaction. This ensures we stay close to how we are doing and respond quickly if there is something we aren’t doing quite right.

Over the last quarter, 74% of customers said they were happy with their service experience with 14% rating their experience with us a neutral.

We also look to 3rd party review sites to see how we are doing. So far this year, 91% of customers rate us as 5 stars on review site TrustPilot.

How we're doing (the numbers)

Top 5 reasons for complaints last quarter

Payment Issues

At Octopus Energy we believe that we achieve the best outcomes when we treat customers as individuals, with unique circumstances and needs. This holds true for customers that are in arrears, especially at a time where costs are rising for everyone. Our teams are empowered to find individual, affordable solutions by talking to customers and understanding what works best for them.

What we’ve done:

• We’ll regularly review Direct Debits to help ensure customers are paying the right amount for the energy they use to avoid building up a debit. We'll always work with customers to make sure the amount they pay each month is affordable for them.
• We expanded our Octo Assist Fund, setting aside £15m to help those worried about paying for their energy this Winter. If you're an Octopus customer worried about your energy bills, you can access our Financial Support form here – a quick and simple online tool which asks you a series of questions about your financial situation and helps us to understand how we can best help you.
• We’re supporting customers through the rise in energy costs. We’ve made it easier for customers to tell us that they’re concerned, and we’ll work with them to provide the support they need.
• Customers can see projected balances on their online account which lets them see how their account will look in 6 months' time with their current payments.

What we’re doing:

• We’re partnering with organisations to make completing affordability assessments simpler and more accurate including a service that checks if customers are entitled to claim further benefits or support beyond what Octopus offer.
• We lead the way by providing free electric blankets to customers who need them, recognising that heating a blanket costs a fraction of what it costs to heat an entire house.
• We offer bespoke solutions as required that can include standing charge holidays, reduced payments or schemes to provide financial support where circumstances suggest people need a little extra help.
• We constantly review the support we provide to all our Specialists to ensure that they are well equipped to resolve payment issues.

Billing

We’re always looking for ways to improve our dynamic billing processes based on customer feedback. In recent months we’ve streamlined the customer journey, from meter reading submission to payment.

What we’ve done:

• We’ve worked hard to ensure that our communications are as clear as possible, with more information on our statement emails that is tailored to the customer. We’re also offering more comprehensive answers to frequently asked questions.
• We’ve tightened restrictions around back billing to ensure that customers aren’t charged for energy they used more than 12 months ago.
• We’re continuously working to ensure that the number of customers who haven’t had a bill is kept to an absolute minimum, and our energy specialists are working with our tech team to make billing errors a thing of the past.

What we’re doing:

• Reviewing our billing system to improve innovative billings products such as Intelligent Octopus and Fan Club
• Improving the meter reading submission journey to make it easier than ever to submit readings quickly and correctly.
• Improving training for our operations teams, to ensure that all of our staff are equipped to deal with complex billing queries.

Smart Billing

Smart Tariff bills provide you with all the information you need to understand your energy consumption. They’re reliant on half-hourly consumption data sent to us by your smart meter. That means in a 30 day period we use almost 1500 pieces of data to provide you with a bill! Sometimes this data gets lost between your smart meter and our system and we have to send off some requests to retrieve it. In recent months we’ve implemented changes to Kraken, our tech system, so that it does this automatically, and often before you’ll be able to notice it was missing at all. We’ll continue to improve this process until we can be sure of minimal disruption to your bills.

What we’ve done:

• We’ve worked hard to ensure that our communications are as clear as possible, with clear information on our Smart Tariff bills which are tailored to give a great understanding of where the costs originate from.
• We’re continuously working to ensure that the number of customers who haven’t had a bill is kept to an absolute minimum, by instructing our tech system to retrieve missing consumption data in instances where a bill hasn’t been issued on time.
• For smart tariff customers whose meters we’re not connected to yet, we are issuing estimated bills regularly.
• We’ve implemented changes to our billing platform to ensure we improve efficiency when manually resolving billing errors.
• We’ve introduced routine training sessions to help all of our energy specialists to manage tricky Smart Tariff billing issues to ensure all of our customers can be helped.

What we’re doing:

• Continuing to improve and streamline the automatic process of our tech system creating your Smart Tariff bills without the need for an Energy Specialist to be involved.
• Improving training for our operations teams, to ensure that all of our staff are equipped to deal with complex billing queries.
• Continuing to improve the way we identify and solve billing failures for customers on our smart products in order to ensure our customers receive their statements on time.

Customer Service

Our customers are at the heart of everything we do, so each time we interact, we’ll send them a follow up survey to see how we did. We do this every time, not just for those who have a straightforward query. We don’t want to hide when things go wrong, we want customers to be able to tell us so we can improve. Rather than being bounced around obscure departments, we believe all our specialists should be able to help you with your questions.

What we’ve done:

• Introduced an Operations Academy for Ongoing Excellence so we can continue to ensure our people have the skills to be industry-leading energy specialists.
• We’ve grown our teams, meaning more people to respond and help you with anything you need.

What we’re doing:

• Expanding training, with refresher courses run each month for all specialists, making sure they are always giving you the most up-to-date information.
• Introduced more opportunities for our Energy Specialists to partake in our Academy for Ongoing Excellence and improve their skill sets. Those specialists can become team experts, enabling everybody to better support their customers.

Metering

We understand that metering issues are a source of customer dissatisfaction and we have made a great effort to engage with manufacturers and industry to improve the reliability of our smart meter fleet. We’ll do everything we can to make sure your smart meter is installed and communicating with us. For customers who join us with smart meters already installed, we undertake specific actions to ensure that you have smart capability immediately and also look to resolve issues that we inherit from your old supplier.

What we’ve done:

• Developed industry-leading smart tariffs to continue to reduce energy consumption at peak times and provide a super low-cost supply for EV users.
• Our installation teams are working with our frontline energy specialists to ensure we have up-to-date information available to deliver the very best customer service.
• We are working closely with the meter manufacturers and industry leaders to make sure that any metering problems can be quickly identified, resolved and fixes put in place.
• Developed a smart meter auto resolution architecture so we'll know there is a problem and be able to resolve it before our customers are aware.
• Expanding our expertise into the world of heat pumps to deliver a carbon-neutral heating system for our customers with price-efficient smart tariffs.

What we’re doing:

• Empowering our frontline energy specialists with customer-friendly technical instructions that allow the commissioning of meters remotely, resulting in reduced time without smart metering capability.
• Continuing to grow our own in-house installation team to ensure that the customer service delivered when installing meters is in line with Octopus Energy's overall customer service ethos.
• Teaming up with industry-leading EV manufacturer Tesla, to bring new service propositions, special tariffs and features to benefit the exploding electric vehicle market.