OREANDA-NEWS. SSE is leading the way in the energy industry through its proactive, award winning approach to customer service.

In recent years SSE has taken an especially rigorous approach to reporting complaints. Whenever a customer expresses any form of discontent, be that something minor like correcting the name of the bill payer or a more serious concern over incorrect meter readings, SSE’s customer service teams will take a note so that the issue can be escalated immediately to those who can help. 

As a result, issues can be dealt with quickly and effectively without customers having to worry about taking their problems to third parties or consumer groups. The latest Ofgem complaint figures show that this approach is working. In 2015, SSE self-reported 12,900 complaints per 100,000 customers.  Out of all these, only four complaints per 100,000 were accepted by the Ombudsman for further investigation meaning 99.969% of issues were resolved by SSE, in house, without customers having to ask the complaints watchdog to hold us to account. 

In the last quarter of 2015, SSE’s customer service teams resolved 84% of complaints by the end of the next working day. However, we know that just as much effort needs to be made resolving the tricky complaints as well as the easy ones. That’s why SSE is also the only energy supplier to inform its customers of their right to speak to the Ombudsman six weeks after a complaint, rather than the industry standard of eight weeks. This helps customer get the help they need as quickly as possible if we are unable to resolve their complaint for them.

Will Morris, SSE’s Managing Director Retail, said: “SSE takes a rigorous approach to complaints, we register any form of discontent such as a name correction on a bill as an issue. By doing this we may report higher numbers of complaints but it means customers’ issues are dealt with quickly and means we can continue to improve our service.  We receive the lowest number of complaints upheld by the Ombudsman which justifies this approach to ensuring a speedy resolution for customers.”

At SSE, we know that customer service has to be our number one priority because without customers, there would be no SSE. That is why we are proud of our customer centric approach to complaint handling which has resulted in SSE having the lowest number of complaints referred to the Ombudsman in 2015 and having the best complaint handling record every quarter since 2009, according to Citizens Advice.   

Energy customers deserve to receive the best customer service possible, and at SSE that is exactly what we strive to give them.