To the surprise of perhaps only one man, Paul Massara, Chief Executive of nPower has finally admitted that taking his business from the bottom of the energy sector’s customer service surveys (and indeed the position they occupy at the base of all major UK businesses) to the top spot is not attainable.
The publicity stunt, sorry, aspiration, has been finally called out with those charmingly disobliging words of “It was always an aspirational target”.
Great news for the customer no doubt, perhaps it should be an aspirational target to pay a bill?
But putting a brave face on the inevitable, nPower said of their failure that the failure “shouldn’t be taken as a failure” even though they would be “very surprised” if they didn’t fail. Smashing thought process there.
What a time to implode on a key plank in the leadership strategy of the business.
With parent company RWE actively slashing workforces across Europe with some 30% reduction in costs the target.
But not to worry, it’s only the “administrative processes” that will be cut.
After all it’s not like they do anything important anyway like billing, serving and supporting the customer base….
You almost feel sorry for the UK leadership team at nPower, with their jobs rumoured to be on the list for ‘overhaul’, nPower’s project ‘Lean Steering’ couldn’t come at a worse time.
Indeed nPower bravely claimed:
“We won’t stop working towards it until we are there”
Unfortunately that choice might now be out of their hands. One thing is for sure, Massara’s customer service revolution still seems a long way off.