British Gas hit as 224,000 customers quit for rivals

British Gas’ customer churn department has plenty of work to do after its owner Centrica admitted that 224,000 residential customers had defected to rivals in the first three months of this year.
Although the number only accounted for 1.5% of domestic customers – pushing down the total to 14.4 million – the move is likely to ring alarm bells.
British Gas remains the largest domestic supplier in the UK, but it is on a £750m, five-year savings plan.
Centrica said it had cut 800 roles as part of 3,000 job cuts planned for this year. The energy firm revealed last year that it would cut 6,000 jobs, with half expected to go through redundancies.
Centrica said the main reason for its loss of customers was that many had come to the end of their fixed deals and then moving on to other suppliers.
Last year, British Gas’ business division was rocked by a 95% loss in operating profit during the first half, following a botched implementation of a new CRM and billing system.
The utility giant blamed issues with the switch to SAP software for significant delays in issuing customer bills.

TOPICS:British Gas