Scottish Power 'takes 30 minutes to answer the phone'
Energy company makes existing customers wait, but answers new customer sales calls in seconds.
Scottish Power customers have to wait an average of half an hour to get through to a customer service agent, yet potential new customers have their calls answered within seconds, according to new research from Which?
The watchdog made 384 calls to 16 energy suppliers’ customer service and new sales numbers in October to establish just how long existing customers were kept waiting compared to potential new customers.
It called each supplier’s customer service number 12 times and each new sales line 12 times at set times over the day and recorded how long it took to speak to a human being.
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Call waiting times
Here are the call waiting times recorded across the 16 providers.
The table is ordered by customer service line waiting time.
|
Energy provider |
Customer service line waiting time |
New sales line waiting time |
|
Scottish Power |
30:00 |
0:49 |
|
First Utility |
18:44 |
2:52 |
|
E.On |
11:25 |
7:53 |
|
Spark Energy |
10:18 |
12:14 |
|
Sainsbury’s Energy |
6:52 |
8:56 |
|
M&S Energy |
6:38 |
0:44 |
|
SSE |
6:06 |
2:51 |
|
EDF |
4:22 |
2:17 |
|
OVO Energy |
4:19 |
3:16 |
|
British Gas |
3:22 |
2:31 |
|
Ecotricity |
2:35 |
0:46 |
|
Npower |
2:26 |
1:08 |
|
Utility Warehouse |
1:55 |
3:37 |
|
The Cooperative Energy |
1:52 |
1:44 |
|
Good Energy |
1:41 |
1:47 |
|
EBI Co |
0:30 |
0:47 |
Source: Which?
Scottish Power left its customers waiting the longest with the average caller queuing for half an hour, compared to an average wait of 49 seconds for potential new customers.
In contrast four providers - EBI Co, Good Energy, The Cooperative Energy and Utility Warehouse - all managed to pick up the phone to their existing customers in under two minutes.
Npower, which last year took 19 minutes to answer calls to its customer service lines, has seen the biggest improvement, reducing the time down to 2 minutes and 26 seconds.
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Suppliers need to do more
This is the fourth time Which? has carried out a mystery shopping exercise looking at call waiting times and it says the results are still not good enough.
Scottish Power has apologised for the delays and said it would be hiring more staff to improve customer services.
Ofgem has already warned Scottish Power it needs to improve its customer service - including cutting call waiting times down to two minutes - by the end of January or face a sales ban.
Read: Scottish Power faces sales ban over poor customer service for more.
Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said: 'It’s unacceptable that some energy suppliers expect their customers to wait on the phone for so long just to ask a question, give meter readings or complain. With average waiting times of up to half an hour, it is clear some suppliers need to pull their socks up'.
For ideas on how to reduce call waiting times read: How to beat call centre queues.
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