Five disciplines for keeping an energy customer's confidence

In a market where households pay monthly advances and settle once a year, a price shock reaches customers twice: when the advance changes and when the settlement arrives. I plan retention around both moments. With finance, my team models the settlement each customer group would receive at its current advance, and we contact those facing the largest gaps first. We separate departures caused by a competitor's offer from those caused by an unexpected bill, because the responses differ, and we establish reasons from contact records and exit questions rather than inferring them from price. I do not set tariffs or hedging policy. My responsibility is to make sure a customer hears about a change early enough to act on it, in words a customer-service adviser can repeat without reading from a script.

A supplier's green electricity claim usually rests on origin certificates bought separately from the power itself. Few customers know this, and a claim that conceals it invites justified complaint. Every environmental statement we publish now names what it rests on: the technology, the country of production and the volume of certificates cancelled. European consumer rules adopted in 2024, which apply from September 2026, restrict generic environmental claims and neutrality claims based on offsetting, and the regional regulators already publish each supplier's fuel mix. Our legal colleagues approve the wording; marketing owns whether a customer would understand it. I test claims with customers before launch and withdraw any that a reasonable reader would take to mean more than we can show. That discipline has cost us conversions, and I regard the cost as part of the product.

Households on the social tariff, customers in payment plans and those recently in arrears need different treatment from the rest of our base. I keep them out of cross-selling and win-back campaigns, and I ask of every communication whether it could push them towards a commitment they cannot afford. Collections and customer service define these groups; marketing writes to them only with those teams' agreement. In Belgium the social tariff is applied automatically through federal data, so a household may not know it is protected until protection ends. I treat that moment as a priority contact, by telephone where possible. The executive committee also reviews every complaint referred to us by the federal energy ombudsman service, because those cases show where our explanations failed before the failure appears in churn.

Households with solar panels, batteries or heat pumps need a supply contract that matches how they now use electricity. As the regions phase out meter compensation for new solar installations and digital meters spread, an hourly-priced or time-of-use tariff can matter more to a household's bill than the panels themselves. We reach many of these customers through about 120 partner installers. Soléverne taught me that a referral fee shapes what an installer recommends, so we pay for supply contracts still active after six months, and installers use our published savings calculation with their customers. We sell a bundle only when each part makes sense on its own; I will not discount a heat pump to lock a household into supply. The channel is smaller as a result, and its customers stay.

I report brand health to the executive committee through measures other functions can verify. They include the share of settlement bills more than €300 above what the customer was paying in advances, complaints per thousand contracts, ombudsman referrals, cancellations within six months and the reasons customers give for leaving. Awareness and consideration still matter, and we track them, but they do not tell a board whether customers will stay through the next price movement. The bill-surprise measure has been the most useful. It fell from 22 per cent of settlements in 2023 to 7 per cent in 2025, and it moves months before switching does. When it rises in one region or tariff, we look for the cause in our own communications before we look at competitors.