John Sills, author of Making Things Better For Customers and MAD//Fest speaker, explores how Octopus Energy’s commitment to kindness and customer care has made it the UK’s largest energy supplier.

In June 2021, a rather odd headline appeared on the BBC News website

‘Lloyds’ bank manager “sacked for helping customer” headhunted’

The article explained that bank manager Nadia Begum had lost her job after helping a visually impaired customer open his mail and pay his bills.

She hadn’t told her bosses she was doing this, so it was deemed a breach of her code of responsibility. Her contract was terminated with immediate effect.

Octopus Energy, on the other hand, immediately recruited her. CEO Greg Jackson said: ‘When I heard her story, I knew immediately that we needed to hire her... Nadia’s warmth and humanity was the perfect fit.’

It’s not meant to be like this

Gas and electric is, after all, incredibly boring. No-one except the most ardent physicist wants to spend their days thinking about where their energy is coming from. We want to switch on, tune it, and check out of anything to do with the actual supply coming through the pipes.

More than that, the industry is highly commoditised. It’s all about price, right? Head online, find the supplier with the lowest prices, sign up for a year or so before you suspect they’re starting to rip you off.

Not so for Octopus Energy. That ambition was clear right from the off. What other start-up announces themselves onto the scene by co-authoring a report on the malpractice of their six biggest competitors?

Since those early days, Octopus have sought to see the world differently, finding new ways to look at old customer problems, blazing a trail through a highly regulated industry and creating a customer experience enviable in any category.

Got to waste your time and submit a metre reading? Spin their virtual wheel of fortune, and maybe win a prize.

Phone up and put on hold? Then the song that plays will be the song that was number one when you were fourteen years of age. Or, if you don’t like that, you can edit your preferences to whatever music you’d like.

Looks like the National Grid is going to have a surplus of power? Sign up for Octopus’ ‘Free Electricity’ hour to get a notification and an hours’ slot where any electricity you use above your normal amount is without charge. I’ve never done so much washing in my life.

But it’s not all small touches and gimmicks.

They actively promote the use of email, making it easy for customers to get things off their to-do list and creating a useful trail of information about the issue in question.

They use wonderfully simple, human language. With the impending rise of the energy price cap, their CEO wrote to all customers, explaining what was happening, why, showing what the impact might be, and, crucially, showing how people could change tariffs. 

And their ambition to change their entire industry is evident with their movement into solar panels, heat pumps and electric vehicles. Charging for the latter is available through their app, and a new Octopus ‘Electroverse’ app is tying together the endless options of charging points and payment methods. 

In a highly regulated, highly commoditised industry, customer expectations are low and the competition is easy to outperform. You don’t have to try very hard. And that’s precisely what makes the Octopus’ ambition even more remarkable.

They know that doing this is the right thing for customers. They know that it’ll make them a more efficient, lower cost organisation. But more than that, they know that disrupting the industry by putting customers first will ultimately earn more customer decisions in their favour.

Which is why, seven years on from that BBC report, they’re now the biggest electricity supplier in the UK, with a 22% market share.

Maybe there’s something in this customer-led thing, after all.

John will be writing for MAD//Insight throughout the year.