Power firm holds its own against the big boys

Wanganui's energy company Energy Direct NZ continues to punch above its weight in the gas and electricity supply market, and it's doing it because it understands customer service.
The company features prominently in the annual Consumer NZ online customer survey, claiming the top ranking in the gas supply field and holding on to second place among electricity suppliers.
Yesterday Michael Ram, Energy Direct's general manager, said that while his company was "playing against the big boys" the cornerstone for its success was its customer service.
"We may be small, but we deal with people personally and can move quickly when anyone has a problem," Mr Ram said.
The Consumer survey took place in August with almost 8500 online members rating their electricity suppliers and 2047 more rating their reticulated gas supplier.
The "satisfied" rating was recorded when respondents rated their supplier's performance as "good" or "very good".
In the reticulated (piped) gas area, Energy Direct NZ holds top spot (83 per cent) but Consumer's survey shows that Mercury Energy was at its heels (79 per cent).
The satisfaction rating ranged from a low of 61 per cent to Energy Direct's table-topping 83 per cent.
As with others in the Consumer survey of electricity providers, Energy Direct improved its position from the same survey held a year ago.
While Powershop holds top ranking with 92 per cent satisfaction, Energy Direct has levered another percentage point of satisfaction over the last 12 months to achieve an 83 per cent rating.
That gives it the runner-up spot with Energy Online which has improved the most (up 9 per cent) from its 2009 survey placing.
Energy Direct customers told the surveyors that they liked the company's friendly and helpful service: "There are real people to answer the phone," some of them said.
Again there was a broad range of customer satisfaction recorded in the online survey, ranging from a low of 48 per cent to Powershop's 92 per cent.
Mr Ram told the Chronicle that the market was holding a "steady-as-she-goes" attitude at the moment and the company had not been actively marketing its services in the last 18 months.
"We've got twice as many electricity customers as gas customers but half of those are dual customers taking both gas and electricity from us," he said.
Mr Ram said there were still a lot of customers buying gas only from Energy Direct but he said much of that could be historical and dating back to when the company dealt in gas supply only.
"But overall we're more than happy with the way we've been performing," he said.
Consumer said people who received their electricity and gas from the same supplier liked the discounts offered and the convenience of a single invoice.
What should appeal to the supply companies is the fact that customer satisfaction has increased among both electricity and gas users.
"For the last five years," Consumer said, "Overall satisfaction with electricity suppliers has hovered between 65 per cent (last year) and 69 per cent. This year the overall rating is 73 per cent.
"It's a similar story with the gas companies. Overall satisfaction ... rose from 66 per cent in 2009 to 73 per cent this year."
But there's a clear warning on the survey for supply companies. People who were dissatisfied with their supplier were now more likely to switch to another company.
In the same survey conducted in 2005, fewer than seven per cent said they had gone to another company in the previous year; this year nearly 17 per cent said they had.
This is only the second year gas companies have been included in Consumer's survey.