Shell Energy Tops Help Desk Ranking of 10 UK Utility Providers

A new study from SaaSGenius, which contacted ten of the UK’s “leading utility companies” to test the quality and responsiveness of their customer help desks, has perhaps surprisingly found that home energy and broadband ISP Shell Energy came top of the table with a customer support score of 80.1 out of 100.

The study reportedly contacted each utility provider to ask – “I have a question about my latest bill amount and was wondering if you could help?“. After that they measured the response times of the companies across four different methods of customer service to reach a score out of 100.

Admittedly, the focus of this study was on energy providers, although Shell is also one of the few listed that also sells fixed broadband and phone packages to consumers. But today’s results may surprise some of our readers, particularly given how poorly Ofcom tends to rate the provider – due to the high level of customer complaints they attract (here).

Despite this, SaaSGenius found that Shell Energy ranked top for customer support, with an “incredible score” of 80.1/100. Customer seeking support online will, they claim, find that it only takes 1 click to reach the Shell Energy’s live chat help desk. The provider is one of only three utility companies studied to offer 4 methods of customer service, including live chat, telephone, email and Twitter.

Shell Energy was also the only utility company to respond to an email query within 24 hours (they responded in just 27 minutes). But we’d still take this list with a pinch of salt, since consumers tend to rate some of these providers rather differently.

However, it’s worth noting that Shell Energy is currently the subject of significant market speculation, with some sources predicting that it may be acquired by utility provider Ovo Energy (here), which could later look to sell off the broadband base like they did with SSE before.