The sustained political buzz we’ve seen, trumpeting the benefits to customers of changing their energy supplier regularly, has led to a greater proportion of them feeling the itch to switch.
For energy suppliers, this has intensified the need to focus on customer loyalty. After all, a customer retained is a customer won; it’s much harder for a business to maintain growth if it is losing customers, however effective its marketing strategy for gaining new ones might be.
So what can energy suppliers do to secure customer loyalty in a sector where it can be difficult to differentiate the quality of service from competitors?
The answer is that loyalty is not driven by the core “hygiene” factors that every supplier must get right to stay in the market. There is a basic standard of value for money and service provision that is simply expected, and if a supplier falls below it, their issue is not one of customer loyalty but commercial competitiveness.
No, loyalty in the energy market is achieved through smaller, softer things that might be difficult to measure and might seem inconsequential. Are issues dealt with quickly? Are staff pleasant to deal with? If customers like dealing with you and feel you deliver good value, they will find it hard to say goodbye.
It’s also important to monitor levels of loyalty among different segments, so you can focus your efforts in the most effective way.
With competition as fierce as it is, loyalty is not an area in which energy suppliers can afford to compromise.
Nick Hague, director, B2B International