People
Deserve our customers’ trust
Target
Be the most trusted company in the UK
The way we measure this may evolve over time, but for now we will use customer Net Promoter Score (NPS) to assess our performance. Our aim is to be the most trusted company in the UK by 2030. This will require a concerted effort from everyone at OVO but we’re passionate about our customers and our purpose, so we believe it is achievable.
OVO Approach
Building trust
From the beginning we set out to show people that energy could be done differently, that energy could be simpler, cheaper and greener. In a sector where trust is low, our commitment has always been to make every decision as if the customer is in the room with us. We have always worked to do the right thing for our customers, earning a relationship with them and operating with transparency and integrity to build their trust. Today, trust is even more important as we deal with the complex challenge of decarbonising the energy system. Plan Zero stakes our company’s future on the fact that consumers need actionable solutions for a new type of energy system. Customers will only adopt these solutions if they trust us.
One way we can earn trust is to have affordable, clear, transparent, accessible and simple offerings. Across OVO we have different brands with different price points for our customers, but no matter which brand our customers use, our commitment is that the price will always be fair.
Championing our customers
OVO has a history of championing consumer interests. We have spoken out about practices within the industry that we believe negatively impact our customers, such as our strong support for a price cap on energy bills, and we will continue to protect and advocate for our customers. We are developing and strengthening our processes for vulnerable customers through accessible website design, products, training for customer service agents and a review of our third party providers.
We pride ourselves on our customer experience. Over the years our approach of transparency, fair pricing and unrivalled customer service has won many awards, most recently, uSwitch Supplier of the Year 2019. As customer demands change, we need to adapt and interact with our customers on multiple touchpoints. We are working on providing easy and intuitive solutions to customers so that whether they are on the phone with our award winning call centre or using our app or our website, they know that we will go the extra mile for them.
Next Steps
Case study
BOOST'S WINTER WALLET
Helping you manage your bills
Our vision is to power human progress with clean affordable energy for everyone and in Boost the ‘affordable’ part of the vision is critical. We want to champion stretched and struggling families and find more ways to help them manage their finances beyond just topping up their energy. So, last year we launched the Boost Winter Wallet, a smart way for our customers to spread their energy costs over the year.
Boost customers pay as they go, topping up when they need energy, so they can find that their costs are much higher in the winter than in the summer. Using the Winter Wallet they can set a savings target and put aside credit during the warmer months, which they can then use in the colder months, therefore spreading the cost. Last year Winter Wallet was a great success with 25% of eligible customers opting in and saving a combined total of £1m, and we rewarded anyone who reached their target with a 5% bonus. This year we want to help our customers even more by giving them seven months to save instead of two, and enabling them to ‘set and forget’, where we work out how much they need to save every day to reach their target and put it aside for them.
Case study
Earning you money
We are committed to helping our customers to manage not only their energy, but their energy bills too. Our OVO Interest Rewards are one way that we help customers to keep their account balances healthy. We pay interest on customers’ credit balances that increase depending on the duration they’re with OVO Energy. We provide 3% interest on credit balances in the first year, rising to 4% in year two, and 5% the following year and every year after.
If a customer is in credit when we generate their statement, we’ll work out the OVO Interest Reward based on the credit balance brought forward from that statement. This will then appear in their next statement. We give interest when customers are in credit, but we never charge interest when customers are in debt. This is just one of the ways that we reward our customers for their loyalty. This is just one of the ways that we reward our customers for their loyalty.
Case study
Keeping costs low
OVO’s trading team has developed a number of tools in-house to purchase commodities as efficiently as possible and reduce trading risks. This helps us to manage the 4.7 TWh of electricity and 13 TWh gas OVO Energy purchases each year, passing on savings from intelligent trading through reduced customer bills. The proprietary demand forecasting model combines regression and machine learning algorithms that analyse data on usage and weather patterns to calculate OVO Energy’s share of Elexon’s standard demand profile, all to a high degree of accuracy. This is essential for avoiding volatile and potentially expensive cash out penalties minimising wholesale costs.
Sustainable development goals
