Octopus famous customer service...

[Stinsy]

My main problem is that emailing a customer to tell them to email a different team is woeful customer service. Why does the customer need to know that the different teams exist? Why does the customer need to email the other team, can’t the case be forwarded internally?

If a tariff isn’t available they could have told me that by reply, not waited a week to tell me to email a different team.

I guess that Octopus has hired some people with experience giving customer service in the energy sector and these people have brought industry practice with them.

[Mr Gus]

https://www.ceoemail.com/index.php

It's all there, just send it straight up the chain.
greg@octopus.energy

[nowty]

My main problem is that emailing a customer to tell them to email a different team is woeful customer service. Why does the customer need to know that the different teams exist? Why does the customer need to email the other team, can’t the case be forwarded internally?

When I originally emailed (pre-covid) about the Go Faster trial, I emailed the standard customer services team and they did forward my request on to the right person. I suspect one of the problems is all this work from home business, you lose the personal interaction and collaboration between teams of people.

[Tinbum]

https://www.ceoemail.com/index.php

It's all there, just send it straight up the chain.
greg@octopus.energy

Sometimes you have to or you get walked on.

I've had to do it with Openreach as they kept telling me in e mails that we were getting FTTP this June. When June comes I find out we've been dropped and it looks as if it happened last year. We have about a 2mb/s connection. The FTTP cable is stopping about 400m from us and despite me saying I would do 200m of trenching and ducting myself they still won't relent.

I've also had to go to the ombudsman to get my holiday costs back after my mothers death early last year. The ombudsman's inspector sided with the insurance company so I was forced to take it all the way. I bet they wish they had just paid out now after the judgment.

[Mr Gus]

If it isn't just a general moan about bruised fruit & ego's, then it is often good feedback to have, systems suffered & raised by one are experienced by all.

I report lamination failures, & all sorts, or as with "mission foods" the ineptitude of the staff & set up who won't take a phonecall when there is a seal failure likely affecting a run of product.

Always better to deal with further up the chain than what often passes for "customer service" with a lot of companies who simply have idiots on the line who fail to understand common language used & "feel demeaned" & try to cut you off, ..the equivalent of a 80's govt yts with no training & subsequently even less interest.

[AE-NMidlands]

I have had 2 issues at supemarkets in the last few years... (warning: thread creep)

1 was about a year ago at a "budget supermarket" where we do most of our daily shopping because it is so close to us. A packet of chicken legs was (smelt) rotten when we opened it the day after buying it. Took it straight back (Sunday afternoon) and asked them to take the rest of the batch off sale. Deputy manager threatened me: "a) they have all been sold and nobody else has complained b) You can either go to EHO with no compensation, or just have your money back now." That was after I had re-opened the packet, the Manageress had recoiled and I had warned them loudly that they really didn't want other customers throwing up on their kitchen floors from the smell alone!

Luckily the Manageress who I was actually talking to over-ruled him, wrote down a long statement and gave me my money back. We never saw the under-manager in the shop again... The chicken turned out to have come from from 2 Sisters - who have been repeatedly fined for taking back out-of-date poultry, washing it in bleach and sending it out again with a new "sell-by" date on. Look up their numbers and don't ever buy it. They even supply the most expensive supermarkets! When we have no alternative we have bought a whole roasting chicken with their number on, but we really avoid them if we possibly can.

2nd was pigs liver covered in white "milk spots" from another big supermarket which owns/controls its own supply chain. Absolutely unforgivable. Because I know someone involved in their meat business I contacted him, he couldn't believe it until I emailed him some pictures, when he really sat up and paid attention. However I only got an apologetic email from someone higher up, when sending it to an EHO would have raised the roof. I didn't even get my money back!

Both really poor customer service, in my opinion. I could have made life very much more difficult for them.
A

[Stinsy]

I had a look on Twitter and saw a bunch of Tweets from people who where dealing with long delays and poor quality customer service from the Octopus emails team. So I've given in and emailed the CEO. I have no idea if Greg will get to read my email personally but maybe the person who does will intervene on my behalf even if they don't actually fix the broken customer service function.

Here is the text for your interest:

Hi Greg,

I’m writing to give you some insight as to the real world experience being a customer of Octopus Energy interacting with your customer service team.

Back at the beginning of 2019 we fitted solar panels/battery storage to our house and bought an electric car. To make the most of these we wanted to take advantage of an Octopus ToU tariff. So we joined Octopus Energy and asked for a smart meter to be fitted.

Octopus where unable to fit a smart meter immediately, then the coronavirus pandemic happened and we didn’t chase Octopus on the smart meter for many months. We guessed that the engineers who had been previously fitting smart meters might have been redeployed to backfill sick or isolating engineers doing urgent work maintaining and repairing the power grid. We believed that we would be “on the list” and Octopus would get to us soon. However as the months dragged on we did enquire as to when we could expect the smart meter and were fobbed off with “because COVID” and “No way of knowing when” which was a little disheartening as by that point “because COVID” had become the standard excuse of terrible customer service teams everywhere and was rarely-if-ever genuine. Also the failure to give us an indication of the backlog (can we expect to wait a week? a month? another year?) left us feeling very sure that the person replying hadn’t made any genuine attempt to help us and was just “munching through tickets” as quick as possible.

So my wife telephoned Octopus. The person on the phone was very helpful, there was an error and while our request for a smart meter to be installed had been logged, for some reason no engineer had been allocated. The operator was able to book an appointment very soon afterwards and a smart meter was duly installed on the first day that was convenient to us. The engineer was polite, professional, and happy to answer questions.

I have no doubt that had my wife not telephoned Octopus we would still be being fobbed off by your email customer service team.

Shortly after our smart meter was installed we emailed asking to move to a ToU tariff. Nearly a week later we received a reply telling us to email a different team at Octopus. We did as instructed and forwarded the original email and the reply to the new email address. No reply thus far.

A few points:
- Should fitting a smart meter and changing tariff take 18 months and counting?
- Should your email customer service operators be fobbing customers off without any attempt to investigate / fix the issue?
- Should customer service EVER ask a customer to email a different team? (surely the different teams should be something internal to Octopus, the customer should only have one interaction point.)
- We still don’t know if the tariff we asked for is available or not. We don’t know which tariffs are available in the case that it isn’t. And we haven’t been offered a different ToU tariff temporarily in the case that the one we asked for involves a delay.
- Your customer service function is clearly broken. I strongly suggest that you intervene personally to squash the culture of “ticket munching” and return to offering real customer service (something your company was once known for).
- I would be very grateful if you could also personally intervene in our case and get us switched to a ToU tariff immediately (I believe this can be done very quickly with the right motivation).
- A quick glance on Twitter found a number of people with similar experiences.

Thanks for taking the time to read my email. My wife will try to find the time to call your customer service today but we are busy people and struggle to find time to sit on the phone waiting in a queue.

Regards

[Stinsy]

Sorted.

I'm sure Greg didn't read my email. However the Octopus team couldn't have been more helpful once I'd sent an email to the CEO. They are clearly capable of delivering good customer service it is a shame they only choose to do so to customers who have kicked up a fuss.