Energy firms' customer service getting worse, MSE poll finds

The number of MoneySavers deeming service to be 'poor' increased at all of the 12 companies that appeared in both this latest set of results and our last set, while overall the number of customers ranking service as 'great' dropped at all but one of the companies.

If you're looking to switch energy providers you can do a full comparison via our Cheap Energy Club and filter results to show only those with a certain rating, based on our service polls.

Small suppliers outperform big six

The latest results show smaller energy suppliers continue to outperform the big six when it comes to customer service, with gas-only supplier Zog Energy topping the table for the fourth time running – 96% of voters with the firm said it had 'great' customer service. Bulb, Octopus Energy and Tonik Energy made up the rest of the top four and were all new entrants to our table.

The worst three companies for customer service were Npower, Scottish Power and British Gas/Scottish Gas – all big six energy firms. The best of the big six, EDF, only came ninth overall, with 19% of voters with the company saying its customer service was 'poor'.

Flow Energy had the biggest drop in customer satisfaction, falling from third to eleventh in our table. It puts this down to high levels of customer calls as a large number reached renewal recently.

MoneySavingExpert carries out an energy firm customer service poll twice a year, and ranks all providers attracting at least 100 votes. Almost 5,000 users took part in our November 2017 poll.

The results in full

Here is the full table of results from our latest energy company service poll:

Energy company service rating, November 2017(results and ranking from March 2017 in brackets)

What the energy firms say

Chris Thewlis, customer services director of home and business at Npower, said: "We're disappointed to see these results as we're currently receiving the second lowest number of complaints per 100,000 customers out of the big six and our own internal customer satisfaction also shows we're improving on how we're handling complaints. Clearly, there's more for us to do and we'll continue working on improving our position in this survey."

Colin McNeill, retail director at Scottish Power, said: "In a recent survey we had the best call answering times out of the big suppliers and throughout the year we have continued to make solid progress in our service. We are working hard to keep making service improvements and developing new products to look after our existing customers."

A spokesperson for Flow Energy said: "The results are surprising. Our Trustpilot rating is 'great', we were highly rated in the recent Citizens Advice assessment and our own measures of customer satisfaction are still strong. But we'll definitely listen and we'll review our processes to see what we can improve."