Smart meters will help customers know we’re on their side, says E.ON

Installing smart meters in customers’ homes will give energy suppliers the opportunity to gain their trust and help them understand “we’re on their side”, E.ON believes. With trust being a […]

Installing smart meters in customers’ homes will give energy suppliers the opportunity to gain their trust and help them understand “we’re on their side”, E.ON believes.

With trust being a major issue in the industry, Chris Lovatt, Head of Field Operations at E.ON told ELN trust can’t be demanded but needs to be earned.

He said: “You earn it through doing what you say you’re going to do and one of the big opportunities we’ve got is when we go into a customer’s home to install a smart meter [we need] to do a really high quality job and take the chance to engage the customer with really high quality energy efficiency advice and help them understand we’re on their side. We want to help them use less energy and get control of the amount of money they spend on energy.”

Mr Lovatt said that getting started on the rollout ahead of some of the other suppliers will enable them to learn more before it officially kicks in next year.

He added: “Equally I’m under no illusion that as we get into some of the harder-to-reach properties and customers towards the back end of the rollout it will be very difficult. We will need as an industry as a whole some wider support in accessing those properties and customers but there’s a lot of things we could do to build knowledge between now and then and make sure we rollout in a balanced and natural way.”

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