[Anasa_EONNext]

@meldrewreborn and @Andy65 It's Anasa here one of the community Co -ordinators 👋 here to try and help put your mind at rest! With EON next we have the best of both worlds we have interactions via social media, twitter, email and our phone lines are there for customers that prefer to speak over the phone so we have something for everyone. We're active 24 hours a day 😅 and we do have teams overseas to take over once we've logged off for the evening! 💤

Our phone lines are open 9am - 5pm Mon - Friday but online we're always available, its not an instant chat channel but once your interaction has been picked up you'll speak to the same advisor until they have to log off.

We have been a bit busier than usual with the recent price increase so phone's have been busier than usual and we've had a lot of contact via social media so we've not been able to be as speedy as we'd like getting back to customers.🙁

Contacting customers via social media doesn't mean less interaction or banter its just online instead of over the phone 😊

You're absolutely right there have been a lot of migrations 😰 and we have had to expand rapidly and some things are taking longer than expected, we're still a very new company and we appreciate every customers comments both negative and positive as it helps us thrive and be better, we won't always get it right but with the community on our side we can make EON Next a great place for everyone - so be gentle with us as its all a work in progress and keep telling us what works for you and what doesn't as this is the only way we can some out on top with lots of happy smiling customers 😉

[meldrewreborn]

@Anasa_EONNext

Those are very nice words. But how about publishing the average wait for a telephone caller to get to speak to a human being?

There is a constant stream of posts on the forum from people who have failed to get through to customer services, let alone getting their issue resolved. And why continue to migrate customers from Eon when you can't cope with the customers you already have?

So a specific answer please, not a generalised statement.

[Anasa_EONNext]

@meldrewreborn Thank you for your feedback and yes I agree it might be an idea to publish any wait times we're expecting, did you mean here on the forum? as we do update our customers who message via social media if we're expecting high volumes or calls and we'll let people know who contact us via the phone lines.

I've worked at EON for 20 years 🙈 and there are always times when we get busier than usual and we have longer wait times for customers especially now during a price increase so migrating customers over to EON Next is not the reason why there are longer call waits in fact migrating customer over to EON Next is more beneficial as here we're open 24/7 so we have more time to answer our customers queries and be there when they need us, and having a customer community is also new and another way for customers to reach out as there was no community before you're likely not to have noticed that there are unfortunately times when customers reach out to us to say they can't get hold of us -if you have an specific questions please reach out to us on any platform that is best for you and we'll get back to you it might not be as fast as you'd like but we work had to get to all our customers as soon as we can 😊

[meldrewreborn]

@Anasa_EONNext

The evidence is there - your customers find Eon Next's customers services to be almost uncontactable. I can't see behind the scenes, but it seems to me that a fair number of the posts relate to customers being migrated to eon next. Things were OK before now they're not. so the migration is of itself adding to the issues Customer services are having to deal with.

And some of the stories are heart-breaking - people on prepayment meters having their energy cut off because of problems in the migration. Others who at least have power but are not getting bills, not getting their credit migrated from defunct suppliers, people whose smart meter no longer function as they did - particularly galling when they've been moved from eon to Eon Next!

So clearly Eon Next have done good by taking on customers via OFGEM processes, and that will have necessitated a rapid expansion of Customer Service capability. migrating customers from Eon to Eon next now seems to me to be shooting oneself in the foot - adding to workload at a bad time. Of course there will be peaks and troughs in workload in normal times - customers can understand that. But customers can recognise how long they should have to wait to get through - and Eon next is currently failing to meet customers reasonable expectations.

[Andy65]

I think to be fair @meldrewreborn it's difficult to judge the Customer Service of any business from their Community Forums. I doubt that it's a true representation of response times or even a sufficient sample size to analyse with any level of confidence. Yes it could be better, it can always be better.

I have no idea if this applies to Eon/Eon-next but during Covid, and even now, it was common to see businesses stating on their websites how busy they were on phone lines etc, essentially trying to deter customers from calling. I have no doubt that for some businesses they've taken the opportunity to slim down their Customer Services.

I haven't had to contact Eon-next myself but when I have had to contact my Bank, Insurers etc, I've got through either straight away or with minimal delay. This has always been when their websites state 'we're busier than usual' etc. I'm sure though that other customers may have waited 30 minutes or more to get through, the difference being that the minority with a poor experience are likely to vent their frustration elsewhere whereas satisfied customers very rarely praise.

What would be interesting to know though is how much of their time is now taken up with smart meter issues.

[meldrewreborn]

@Andy65

So a satisfied customer is the one who hasn't had to contact Eon customers services?

We can all make comparisons between organisations to judge what is acceptable. To me there are too many post here with a common thread - tried to contact customer services couldn't get through and no callback.

And in another post Eon have admitted that there is an 8 week delay on sorting a smart meter issue because of the backlog within Eon next.

[Andy65]

Originally Posted by meldrewreborn

@Andy65

So a satisfied customer is the one who hasn't had to contact Eon customers services?

I didn't sat that at all.

[meldrewreborn]

@Andy65

I find it interesting that so many post here are not picked up by the Eon staff, even though it is clear that there is a big problem that needs dealing with - like having all your prepaid credit taken to meet another persons debt, leaving you and kids without energy.

I'm no fan of smart meters but they should be made to work properly. However issues posted here sometime flag up serious matters that need dealing with quickly. Even those are not addressed.

[Anasa_EONNext]

Hi @meldrewreborn Anasa here 👋The community is a friendly forum, space where customers gather to support each other and help each other by sharing their experience both good and bad as a negative experience can only help us thrive and be better, we want to enpower our customer to have a voice and to be part of a community.

A great platform to ask questions,start conversations or vent their problems in a safe pace.

Our job as Community Co - ordinators is to make sure that it continues to stay a safe and supportive place by moderating threads and posts, deleting any spam, although we’re giving the community to the customers to support each other there are times when we need to step in and answer questions or direct customers to the right direction.

As for Smart meters of course they should be made to work properly and the thing that is causing the most issues are our original Smart meters that we call Smets 1 as they aren't designed to work when you change over suppliers, these meters were installed years ago way before EON energy migrated to EON Next and we've been working hard to get the new smart meters installed for all customers but with the pandemic this delayed a lot of this as you can appreciate and there are still now times when we can't go out due to covid, we have the Smets meter 2 now that can be updated to work with any supplier but sadly its not a quick flick of the button and the the meters can take a few weeks to update.

The community is new and we're working on getting up posts for our most popular issues such as smart and fit if you look around the community you'll see that we have a spokes person for FIT enquiries and one of our members has put a great guide to troubleshooting smart meters.😊

[slavo]

@Han_EONNext Hi, I've used the website to top up my acc, but the money are still not in since yesterday, running on low credit atm. Tried using app, but it still doesn't work(cannot log in, constantly see a rolling sun), wrote an e-mail but had no answer aswell.