MY ENERGY: 2022 was the year when Norges Bank’s key interest rate jumped from 0.5 per cent to 2.75 per cent. Correspondingly, the general price level also increased sharply, and Statistics Norway referred to the price increase in 2022 as “extraordinary». Electricity prices in particular rose to unknown heights, in price area N01, Austlandet where most people live, the weekly average price rose to a staggering NOK 6.27 per kilowatt hour in late summer 2022.
Against this background, it is reasonable to wonder how dissatisfied electricity customers have become, since electricity is a commodity that everyone must buy. The Norwegian Customer Barometer 2023 customer survey has recently been launched, and it is possible to find a couple of answers there.
Tibber blundered out
The most startling thing in this year’s investigation of the electricity company is that Tibber has dropped like a stone on the list. The company was included in the survey for the first time in 2022, and then it shot straight into third place among all surveyed companies, regardless of industry.
Before the power crisis really set in, Tibber flew high. In an article on the E24 website from the summer of 2021, we can read that the company had increased its turnover by nearly 600 percent compared to the previous year. Customers flocked in, and managing director Edgeir Vårdal Aksnes was able to refer to Tibber as “Norwegians’ favorite power supplier” in a press release later that year, and that every month the company gained 20,000 new customers. That was the time.
On the collective list of all examined companies i The 2023 edition of the Norwegian customer barometer, we find Tibber in the 108th place. That is a drop of 105 places on a list with 159 companies in total – in just one year.
It is obvious that this fall has to do with the controversial move the company made in the fall of 2022. Then Tibber began invoicing half the next month’s consumption in advance, to strengthen the company’s liquidity for stream trading. This was not received kindly by the company’s customers, and the noise level around this was high the rest of the year. Towards the end of February 2023, the company’s retreat from the new scheme came through a news item on the company’s own website:We get out!».
It is difficult to disagree with that, now that we have obtained some kind of conclusion through the Norwegian customer barometer.
Most of them improve
There are a total of eight electricity companies involved in the survey. In addition to Tibber’s free fall, Nord-Trøndelag Elektrisitetsverk (NTE) also fell compared to last year, from 85th to 99th place. All the other stream companies improved their position compared to the 2022 list. This indicates that electricity prices alone have not affected the electricity company’s esteem among its customers. This is also pointed out by the project manager for the Norwegian customer barometer, Pål Rasmus Silseth at BI Business School:
– The conclusion shows that the customers seem to direct their frustration at the authorities instead of the electricity suppliers, he says in an article about this year’s survey on BI’s website.
It is not inconceivable that it is a correct analysis, when we think about how the governing party has done in opinion polls since the last parliamentary election.
The article refers to the results for most of the electricity companies as a “significant improvement” compared to last year’s survey. When we study the numbers, we see that most of them have moved up 10 to 20 places on the list. The exception among those who go up is Lyse. They climbed from 134th place in 2022 to 70th place in 2023. It really is a solid improvement. It is also worth noting that, despite everything, Tibber did not fall completely to the bottom of the stream companies, they have four out of eight companies in this category behind them, also in the 2023 survey.
The project manager also comments on Tibber’s brutal fall on this year’s results list.
– It is very rare that we observe such a large impact on customer satisfaction. It shows that a strong position can quickly be destroyed if actions are taken that are perceived as negative for the customers, says Silseth.
– Sincere regrets
The company’s PR and communications manager Gaute Haaversen-Westhassel also agrees that the restructuring of the invoicing system is the cause of Tibber’s downfall.
– We are aware that we did something that our customers were not very excited about, and take it seriously, he replies when Min energi asks about the company’s reaction to the Norwegian Customer Barometer in 2023. He prefers to focus on the company returning to the old invoice system from and including March 2023, which was announced in the article “Vi tabba oss ut!” on Tibber’s own website.
We observe that this was laying down well flat?
– It was a sincere regret, because we saw that we saw that we had seen our customers in a difficult situation. And that’s why it was so important for us to be able to reverse in February, and we worked on this continuously since we introduced the new invoicing system last autumn. But then the outlook was much less clear than it was, especially after Christmas, where electricity prices have been more stable, Haaversen-Westhassel replies.
– But all in all, that reversal was very important for our customers, and for our ability to help our customers take control of their own electricity consumption. That is what is at the core of our business, he concludes.
2023-05-16 16:00:00
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