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UTILITY WEEK | 10TH - 16TH JULY 2015 | 27 Customers professional services like tax firms and legal firms where the relationships are long and you can build that trust." Q: Where is the most exciting innovation taking place in the B2B market? "Most of the innovation we're getting involved in is around energy solutions, get- ting in on the demand side of the meter, and forming longer, more interesting relation- ships with clients. This is an area we've had less involvement with in the past, partially because it requires trust, but we've built trust and we're now beginning to work on energy solutions – whether that's helping customers to use energy at the right time of day, or reduce consumption or interact with market mechanisms such as National Grid's demand-side balancing reserve, or STOR [short-term operational reserve]. "Quite recently we've acquired a small start-up business based in south Wales called Rumm, which is predominantly a data management and data intervention company – they collect data from remote devices but they also have behavioural scientists and carbon psychologists at work for them." Q: How does the work done on the corpo- rate level impact the smaller end of the B2B market? "Our market space is the larger end of the B2B market. Our smaller clients tend to spend £50-100k a year with us. It's still a large amount but a lot less than the top end where customers spend hundreds of millions every year. With our big corporate clients we have bespoke deals – we don't pitch stuff to them because we try to work with them to find out what they need and then design a product and service around that. At the smaller end we have customers that are more transactional, and they don't have the time or capacity to think too much about energy so they want simpler services and this is where we tend to design offerings for them. Generally what this end of the market wants is more certainty. So when the feed-in tariffs started to come through, as changes to taxes came through and we had to pass them on to our customers, our customers said: 'we don't want our costs to change every time something changes, give us a fixed price'. Some of the things we work on is guaranteeing that the price you pay at the beginning of a contract is the same price you'll pay for the duration. It sounds simple but it means there's more risk for us to manage – every time the government does something new, that's another risk we have to manage. But that's our bread and butter, and what we should be doing for clients." Market view Restoring public trust in utilities What concerns people most is price: cut costs, and you can pass the savings on to customers, says Sulakshana Patankar. U tility companies not only lag other sectors when it comes to customer satisfaction, they have also lost the trust of the pub- lic. The media continue to report on a "broken" energy market that is failing to provide for customers, and politicians have helped stoke the debate. Whatever your stance in this debate, it must be rec- ognised that it takes place as our utility companies face a once-in- a-generation challenge. With a substantial proportion of generating capacity scheduled for retirement over the coming decade, reducing our buffer to withstand supply disruption at times of peak demand, energy companies must square this massive investment requirement with the affordability agenda. Despite this, and in part because of it, it is essential that compa- nies focus on regaining public trust. Reassuringly the findings of our latest utilities survey found both scope and a real appetite within the industry to regain the initiative, with 93 per cent believing that utility companies should take the lead to re-establish confidence. Reversing this tide of negativity will not be easy. Utility compa- nies alone cannot address the structural and market factors that con- tribute to high energy prices. But they can take steps to rebuild trust by improving communication and customer service. Poor communi- cation was cited by 94 per cent of respondents as one of the most sig- nificant factors driving energy customers to switch supplier, second only to price (99 per cent) and followed by lack of trust (91 per cent). Thin margins may leave little scope to reduce bills, but customer anxiety about energy prices can be mitigated by good customer service backed by transparent and accurate bills. Aer all, utility companies not only supply essential services of water, heat and elec- tricity but also build and maintain strategic national infrastructure, ranging from offshore wind arrays and North Sea gas fields to sewage works and high-voltage transmission networks – and they do this at a price that is lower than the European Union-wide average. Yet the debate, mystifyingly for our continental neighbours, is one about high prices rather than value for money, the factor that our respond- ents rated highest for its importance to customer satisfaction. Ultimately, any step towards change must be underpinned by cus- tomer service if it is not to ring hollow. Achieving this may be easier said than done but here are simple steps that can be made to ensure public faith is restored: invest in the correct infrastructure; embrace social media; and use data to make informed business decisions. Despite the oen shrill and opportunistic tone of the public debate, the good news is that there is scope for the utility sector to restore public trust and for many, working with an external partner to address many customer concerns has now become a priority. More than half of respondents (53 per cent) said greater use of out- sourcing and shared services could save money. Given that an over- whelming majority (97 per cent) identify price as the most important factor when consumers switch energy supplier, any measures that can reduce the cost to the customer should be a business priority. Sulakshana Patankar, business unit leader, utilities, WNS Global Services