30 November 2019
Industry to adopt common complaint handling standards across the EV sector.
Trust and confidence can be won if consumers’ complaints are dealt with swiftly and fairly. The bundling of home energy, public charging and vehicle services as well as the range of actors involved in the customer journey could create complex interdependencies within service provision. In such circumstances, users need to be confident that any problems will be resolved quickly and fairly, with clear boundaries for who is responsible and how the process will work.
Consumers must not be forced to navigate between different companies and agencies to resolve a problem. To prevent this, clear responsibilities for resolving consumer complaints must be defined and allocated between different market participants. Industry will need to agree to cooperate and work closely, jointly establishing processes to diagnose problems and assign them to relevant parties to create consumer confidence in fast, effective complaint resolution.
Consideration should be given to the following points:
Industry must develop and adopt common, principle-based complaint handling standards by the end of 2021 to ensure that consumers are transferred seamlessly (between market boundaries if necessary) to resolve their problem(s), regardless of who they have initial contact with.