Since December, we have been working hard to improve our customer service performance. As part of this process, we agreed with Ofgem that we would reduce the number of late bills to 100,000 by the end of August. We also committed to improve significantly our complaints performance and report our progress for the rest of the year on www.npower.com/customer
Last month, we reduced our late bills to around 62,000 customers, (96,700 accounts) – slightly better than our final target of 100,000 accounts, and around the level our business was running at before our system issues began.
The total number of complaints outstanding at the end of the month was reduced to 23,000, down from 24,500 at the end of July. We will continue to publish our progress in this area on our website for the rest of the year.
Commenting on yesterday’s figures, Roger Hattam, npower’s Domestic Retail Director, said:
“I’m pleased that we have met our commitment made in June to reach our billing performance target. We’re now billing over 98% of customers on time. However, the journey doesn’t stop here as we’re working hard to make even more improvements.
“For example, we’ve reduced the number of complaints outstanding with the Ombudsman by over 70% since the end of May, but this is an area where we will be doing more. This is our own commitment to our customers.”
Table detailing August’s targets
Complaint category May June July Aug
Complaints received 132,821 120,016 121,662 99,799
Of these, unresolved after 24 hours 15,683 10,788 13,660 9,917
Total complaints outstanding 41,156 30,071 24,558 23,065
Ombudsman complaints outstanding 4,283 2,896 1,587 1,223
Ombudsman remedies over 28 days 33 0 0 0
Late bills
Target N/A 350K A/C 200K A/C 100K A/C
Actual 343K A/C 193K A/C 96,700 A/C
(231K cust) (129K cust) (62K cust)
A spokesperson for Ofgem said:
“Ofgem is encouraged to see that npower has met our targets aimed at reducing late bills and we note their progress on reducing complaint numbers. But this is only a first step to turning round their customer service and billing performance. We will monitor their progress and continue our investigation into the reasons why npower’s problems occurred.”