Why we’ve updated our energy star rating

With more people needing support, good service is more important than ever

Energy is an essential service and people should be able to expect an accurate bill, be able to contact their company easily and get help when things go wrong. During the pandemic, more people are finding themselves in need of support, with around 2 million households behind on their energy bills. There’s help available from energy suppliers, but good customer service is crucial in making sure people can access support quickly and easily when they need it.

How we made our star rating even better

The Citizens Advice star rating helps people understand how energy suppliers treat their customers. Updated every 3 months, the rating compares suppliers across 5 different categories and ranks how good their customer service is.

We regularly review the rating to make sure it remains relevant and useful. In early 2020 we completed a project to update the rating methodology. We did this by:

1. Looking at wider market trends and reviewing the metrics to check if they’re still relevant to consumers
2. Using research and new polling to further understand what was important to consumers and identify proposed changes
3. Speaking to over 50 people from around 30 energy suppliers through workshops and a formal consultation to help develop our proposals
4. Publishing a decision and setting a timeline to implement

From this, we decided to include email and social media message response times in the rating, as these were important areas of service for the people we polled. We also removed scores in relation to bill timeliness from the rating, as this was less important and had become harder to measure.

The COVID-19 pandemic meant that we delayed making the changes to give energy companies more time to prepare and to help them focus on supporting their customers. The latest updates were implemented in December 2020.

Why we take the approach we do

It’s robust

As the official consumer body for energy consumers, we have unique powers to request data directly from energy suppliers. This means they must tell us about things like how accurate their bills are and how long it takes them to answer calls. Our approach is robust because:

• It’s an independent, quantifiable assessment of performance
• The data represents average performance over a 3 month period
• We’re transparent and consistent in how we apply our methodology

It’s reliable

The star rating is updated every 3 months. This means that the scores you see are up to date and take account of recent improving or declining performance. It also helps us to track trends over time. For example, the rating was able to show how suppliers performed both during and after the first lockdown period last year.

It’s representative

Our approach means we’re able to include all but the very smallest suppliers — those with fewer than 25,000 accounts. This means that the star rating includes the suppliers serving over 99% of all households in Great Britain. Our price comparison website, which includes our rating, compares more energy suppliers and tariffs than any other site.

What about alternative approaches?

We think there’s a place for a range of customer service measures in the market. These are normally based on survey data or online reviews, but there are issues with these that we think users should consider…

It can be difficult for consumers to rate customer service objectively and separate their views from the price they are paying. Our price comparison website brings price and service together for users to decide.

The methods above may also tend to represent engaged, digitally-native customers over those who require more accessible services.

What’s next for the rating

We’ll continue to look for ways to improve the rating as the market and people’s preferences change. We know that smart meters should mean consumers are able to get an accurate bill every time and we want to make sure the rating reflects this. We also know that many consumers are using web chat to talk to their suppliers, so we’re looking to incorporate this as soon as we can!