Treating Customers
Fairly

Fairness in action

Our three promises to our customers are to give them fair value, better service and simplicity. We use these commitments to ensure we’re putting them first. Here are some specific ways we’re continuing to do this: 

• We launched a new Blue+Price Protection tariff for our residential customers. Customers on this deal can fix their prices for a year and there is no exit fee if they ever want to change tariff or supplier.
• We know that our small business customers are busy working. So they want clear tariffs with energy prices they can easily check and compare. They can now get a quote online in 60 seconds. Over 10,000 customers used this service in 2016.
• If a customer leaves us and their balance is in credit, we do our best to make sure they get that money back – even if they left us a while ago.

We improved our online priority services tool for residential customers who need extra help. It helps customers get advice on finding the best tariff for them, cutting the energy they use, managing their money and checking they’re getting the right benefits. It’s also for people with special requirements (e.g. partially sighted or disabled customers) and gives them the option to sign up to our priority services register – so we’ll know they might need some extra attention.

• We’re continuing to work with the UK charity Business Debt Line to offer Recovery for business our small businesses. It helps them get back on track with their energy bills, whilst the Business Debt Line gives them advice about managing all their bills, not just energy.
• We continue to improve our response to complaints by focusing on their root causes - what may have happened in our system or process so we can then identify if either needs to change. We’re working hard to keep individual customers informed about what we’re doing to resolve their complaints. And we always ask them for feedback on how we’ve dealt with their issues.
• In addition we collect and commission lots of different types of customer research, including interviewing around 200,000 of our customers every year to test communications, online services and ideas for new products, and generally find ways to improve our services and meet customers’ needs

In 2016 we introduced some new features to MyAccount:

• Customers can now change their tariff and let us know they’re moving house online and with our app.
• We’ve made the website easier to access – for example customers who have trouble using a mouse can navigate just using a keyboard.
• We’ve also made lots of improvements for our blind and partially-sighted customers. Like changing the colour contrast between the foreground and background so it’s easier to read, and making the site more compatible with text-to-speech software that reads it out loud.
• We’ve added more information as well – smart meter customers can check details of their actual energy use online, and we’ve updated the printable tariff information labels to show the exact tariff name information. We’ve added extra questions to the new digital appointment booking so our smart meter fitters know about any special considerations (like if a customer has mobility issues) before the appointment.
• Plus, we’ve added information about the Energy Switch Guarantee which we have signed up to (a voluntary agreement between energy suppliers to follow 10 principles that make switching supplier quick, easy and safe).
• Our Talk Power programme continues to tell our large business customers about changes in the energy landscape. Through regular regional events, webinars and blogs we put them in touch with our experts, and promote networking and idea sharing. Have a look at Talk Power blog to find out more.
• We’ve improved our Market Insight service (which gives our larger EDF Energy business customers access to data and analysis) by adding TRIAD alerts to help them reduce their energy consumption, including a probability report and savings calculator.