Getting meaningful customer feedback is a challenge for many organisations, but it's particularly difficult in the energy sector.

For many customers, energy is a low-engagement, largely transactional service. They may not even know who supplies their energy, or they may see their relationship with their supplier as secondary to the one they have with their broker.

That makes it harder for energy companies to get the insight they need to understand customer needs, improve experiences, and build stronger relationships.

But low response rates don't have to be accepted as a fact of life. Here are five ways to improve participation and get more value from customer insight.

1. Build the virtuous circle

We often argue that survey fatigue isn't quite what it seems. Customers aren't sick of doing surveys; they're sick of doing surveys that feel like they don't result in any change.

If you can show customers that their views are being listened to and acted upon they are much more likely to take part.

The key is, firstly, to make sure that you have the teams and systems in place to diagnose root causes and take action based on what you learn from customers. Secondly, and just as importantly, you need a plan for communicating that action to customers so that they see the improvements and connect them to the research.

Done well that process, bit by bit, builds up a virtuous circle of feedback, action, and communication. Start where you are, use what you learn, and you will find your response rates improving over time.

2. Focus on event-driven research

Any research programme needs both transactional and relationship aspects, but in low-engagement sectors like energy it makes sense to focus on transactional (or event-driven) research in the first instance.

Customers who have been through a recent experience (such as onboarding, a meter exchange, or billing query) are more likely to see the potential value of giving feedback, and often more motivated to share their views, so this is a good way to build quantitative customer measurement into your planning.

Don't fall into the trap of only using customer research in this way, though. You need strategic customer insight focused on the bigger picture and customer decisions as well as tactical measurement focused on specific touchpoints and journeys.

3. Build your customer data

Customer insight is only as good as the database that feeds it, and very often we find that clients don't have all the right people on the database.

An invoicing contact will give you part of the picture, but you may well find that other people (whether it's site contacts, operations, or even an energy manager) both offer a more rounded picture of the relationship and may be more willing to take part in research.

4. Dig into the reasons

Don't simply accept low response rates as a fact of life, but interrogate the reasons for them and, just like an email marketing campaign, test different approaches to find out what works best.

• Are your emails being received? If not, perhaps your data is inaccurate or you need to work on deliverability.

• Are they being opened? If not, perhaps you should test different subject lines and email wording or design.

• Are your surveys being abandoned halfway through? They may be too long, difficult, or confusing.

• Would a telephone survey work better? A hybrid approach usually maximises response.

• How is the survey introduced? Could account managers help to position it or even set appointments?

• How do response rates vary by customer type, contact channel, or survey method?

Once you understand the underlying reasons there are often things you can do to improve response rates.

5. Lean on qualitative insight

One underused approach to the problem of low response rates is to sidestep the issue by focusing on qualitative insight alongside measurement. Customers are often, paradoxically, more willing to give up 30 minutes for a Teams interview than they are to take 5 minutes to complete a web survey.

Don't underestimate the resource required to make full use of what you will learn from a qualitative approach, but you may well find that you learn more from a handful of depth interviews with the right people than you do from a survey of hundreds of customers. It will also position you to improve your quantitative research based on a stronger understanding of customers.

Conclusion

Low response rates are a genuine challenge in the energy sector, but they don't mean that meaningful customer insight is out of reach.

By closing the feedback loop, focusing on key customer events, improving contact data, and testing different research approaches, energy companies can make better use of the feedback available to them. And by combining quantitative measurement with qualitative insight, they can build a much richer understanding of what customers need and where experiences can improve.

With the right approach, customer insight is just as valuable in the energy sector as it is in any other, and there is enormous untapped potential in making sure you understand customers better than anybody else in order to build stronger relationships with them.