So the temperature outside is dropping and the dark nights are drawing in. Yes it’s that time of year again people, time to announce the annual round of energy price rises just as everyone starts to think about switching their heating back on.
So there we have it, Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) gallantly went
first this time with an increase of 8.2% for gas and electricity from 15
November. Energy was already high on the news agenda after the party
conferences but SSE fuelled the fire, starting the speculation as to when the
rest of the ‘Big Six’ and others would follow and how much higher would they
go. Probably nothing unusual in this, the politicians and the national media
have been doing the same dance around the energy issue at roughly this time of
year for the last few years.
But then something remarkable happened.
British Gas announced an 8.4% rise in gas prices and 10.4% for
electricity with dual-fuel bills roughly in the middle and rising by 9.2%.
While the news itself came as a surprise to no one, I don’t think anyone
was expecting them to voluntarily line up the organisation’s Customer Services
Director in front of a social media firing squad.
Unbelievable.
BG opened the floodgates themselves, inviting in an inevitable stream of
criticism and, in my opinion, some well deserved loathing and abuse. But while
it looked like a social media blunder of seismic proportions, surely they can’t
have been so naive? So why did they do it? Here’s what they said:
"We know people are worried about rising energy prices and they
want to talk about this – including on Twitter – and it's important we're there
for them to talk to. That's why we offered a Q&A session with our customer
services director. It was the right thing to do because we are committed to
being open and transparent with our customers at all times. We also want to
make clear rising prices don't have to mean rising bills and there is help
available.”
What do you think? Personally, I think @jamesrbuk asked a very pertinent
question, “Will you pass on the cost savings from firing your social media team
to customers?”
Seriously though, I can see their rationale in using the Twitter Q&A
as a tactic to tackle things head on and be seen to be ‘transparent and open’
with its customers, but the PR team should’ve known better. To me, their main
mistake was timing.
Timing is essential for getting maximum impact but in this case it
should’ve been more about having the right impact and this would’ve helped them
to time the Q&A more appropriately. Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing? But
hopefully BG will learn from this for next time. And you can guarantee there
will be a next time, probably October 2014.
Rachel Meagher
Account Director
