March 23rd: Ofgem has accused the “Big Six” of not playing a fair game with consumers, offering a complex system of tariffs with a great difference between their standard tariffs and direct debit tariffs. In spite of increased consumer calls for a sector reform, ever more frequent investigations and a radical change in utilities’ billing, [...]
Reputation, trust and utilities
March 3, 2011
March 3rd: Reputation is often synonymous with the trust an organisation has generated among its various stakeholder groups, customers, investors, employees, regulators and other key stakeholders base their expectations of a company’s future behaviour on their perceptions of its previous statements and actions.
A decrease in reputation leads inevitably to an erosion of trust, which may result in customers moving to a competitor, shareholders disinvesting, employees leaving among other outcomes. This trust element of reputation also influences how stakeholders respond to a company’s outreach and engagement activities, such as consultation processes, advertising and public relations.
Utilities have been hit by a number of negative reputational stories of late which have impacted the overall trust in the sector by its stakeholder groups. An example of this was the Daily Mail’s coverage of National Grid’s allegedly inaccurate gas meters which led to millions of customers paying too much for their electricity bills.
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