As ScottishPower’s UK Marketing Director, seeking new ways to retain our customers is one of my highest priorities in our highly competitive marketplace. And, I’m pleased to say that our award-winning customer communications are helping to do just that.
Firstly, the new approach we have taken with our Welcome Communications has transformed the switching experience for our new energy customers. Our multi-media solution engages our customers with highly relevant, completely personalised communications through a variety of medium. What’s more, our industry-first, personalised web pages, easily guide each customer through the 5 week process for changing energy supplier. The feedback we have from customers tells us they feel valued ScottishPower customers from day one.
Not only have customers told us they like it but it’s received industry recognition as well. In December 2012, the Welcome Communications won a fourth major award, “Marketing Initiative of the Year” at the Utility Industry Achievement Awards for its personal approach to reducing customer losses. Judged by a panel of experts from across the UK water and energy sectors, this is a prestigious award. This win follows success earlier in the year when this approach won an international award – “Best Practice Award for Direct Marketing 2012” by the Print on Demand Institute (PODi) in the USA whilst also achieving major UK awards from the Marketing Week Engage Awards in 2011 and the Direct Marketing Awards in 2010.
Top Marks from Major Consumer Organisation
Attrition rates are highest amongst new customers so it’s key to ensure the experience these customers receive is first class. That’s why I felt proud when UK consumer champion Which? found that we always offer the best deal during our sales calls and then consumers voted us No 1 for our transfer process in the recent uSwitch Customer Satisfaction survey.
It’s not just communication with our new customers that we’ve improved though. I’m also delighted that when Which? examined key communications from a number of energy suppliers they awarded us a 5-star rating for billing and account management. We were praised for the clarity of our bills and, in particular, the way that key information displayed on the first page and was easy to find. We also saw communication within our call centres improve with the Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service voted us Most Improved.
It’s clear to me that these are excellent achievements for our business and are great recognition of the hard work we are putting in. However, whilst this external recognition is extremely important, the true measure of success is ultimately the satisfaction in and retention of our customers. We can’t be complacent, therefore monitoring this is critical as we constantly seek to improve our performance in all areas and carry out an extensive customer satisfaction research programme ourselves to measure customer experience and identify and implement potential improvements.
That’s why I’m committing to keep listening carefully so we can put our customers first, improve our communications with them and ultimately strive to be the best in the industry at every level.
