OVO - THE UTILITY THAT
SEES ITSELF AS A RETAILER
In this exclusive for Engage Customer we spotlight utilities
challenger brand OVO Energy and ask customer services director
Justin Haines how running the business around the customer is
differentiating OVO from its competitors
Justin Haines is customer
service director, OVO Energy
www.ovoenergy.com
As a challenger brand, OVO Energy is focused
on delivering first class customer service. The
business is designed and run around the
customer and built to adapt quickly and nimbly
to the changing environment we operate in.
This means a number of things to ensure we
differentiate from competitors. The majority of
the management don’t have energy industry
backgrounds and instead come from great retail
brands which excel at customer experience and
engagement. We invest in the best technology
so that we are as rigorously cost efficient and
user friendly as possible; we in fact consider
ourselves a retail business first; a technology
company second; and only as a distant third a
utility. We don’t want to be a no frills energy
provider, we want customers to enjoy their
interaction with us.
We are also honest and transparent about the
price we ask customers to pay, ensuring that we
pass any savings made on wholesale energy
prices directly back to the customer, so when we
save, they save and we are also fair and don’t
offer short term introductory deals which soon
shoot up, nor offer deals to new customers that
aren’t open to renewing customers.
While the utilities sector has a poor overall
reputation for customer service OVO is
saying customers are in every conversation
– how does that manifest itself and what
are your customers saying about you?
OVO was founded with a singular and simple
idea in mind: if an energy company was to be
ISSUE SEVENTEEN • NOVEMBER 2014
built from the ground upwards around what was
best for the customer, what would it look like?
This idea that an energy company should be
designed and run with the customer in mind
has been the foundation upon which OVO’s
growth has been built, and it underpins our
values that as company we treat people fairly,
offer competitively priced products and are
transparent and simple to understand.
When we’re making decisions as a company,
we imagine the customer’s in the room with us.
If they wouldn’t like what we’re thinking about
doing, we don’t do it. And since every single
one of our customers is a switcher, or they
wouldn’t be with us, we’ve always known if we
didn’t work hard enough to keep them they’d
vote with their feet.
We haven’t lost sight of this vision, even despite
our customer base increasing by 280% since
the beginning of 2014. Our customers remain
our number one priority and we are proud of the
feedback we get. MoneySavingExpert recently
recognised us as the number one energy company
when it comes to customer service, and we
also placed first for overall satisfaction in the
energy helpline Customer Satisfaction Awards.
You currently have circa 400,000 customers
and have a target of 1million customers by
2017, how do you intend to achieve that?
Today’s tech savvy customers exist in a diverse,
global marketplace and have much higher
expectations of service and reliability than ever
before. Thinking like a retailer, rather than a
utility, helps OVO guide behaviour in the right
direction and investing in customer service is
our top focus.
M
As a new challenger brand how is OVO
Energy differentiating itself from its
competitors including the Big Six utilities?
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