Dutch utility provider Nuon are running a long-term campaign on TV, radio and Jumbotrons in various places, Schiphol airport being one of them. This campaign has been running for about a year now.
Over the past years Nuon have suffered heavily from customer complaints, especially related to customer service and simple procedures. Transactions that should normally be simple (like for example moving house) become difficult and take a lot longer than is reasonable (this happened to me). Colleagues of mine have been sent bills asking for several hundred euros to compensate for electricity and gas delivered at the wrong prices as long as three years ago, requiring payment within 14 days. Customer service agents are not up to the standards needed according to the customers - several of the ones I’ve been in contact with haven’t even spoken basic English but had to transfer me to a colleague.
Anyway, the theme song used by Nuon for this campaign is You were always on my mind in a new, jazz-style recording with a female vocalist; a nice tune - but aren’t they shooting themselves in the foot with this song? As I see it, their strong sides are their reliability (no power outages due to grid failures in the five years I’ve been here) and their environmental thinking (they offer several levels of “green” electricity), and this in a country that is situated on sand beds, technically under sea level. Why then choose a theme song that suggests to the customer that “our services are something you need to pay attention to constantly - we’re always on your mind".
Of course, that’s not what their intentions are; they are merely trying to save face with the customers, telling them that you, the customer, are always on our, Nuon’s, mind. I would have thought it better to focus on the already positive sides of your products and fix the problems in the background - make sure you train your call center agents better, get more of them if necessary, clarify your procedures, allow customers to query information on their account directly via the web page - those sort of improvements would make a difference, I think. Of course, you should communicate to your customers that you ARE addressing their concerns, but not make it your main campaign.
Choosing another campaign target won’t suggest to the customer that these services are anything you need to worry about, and in time - with the improvements suggested above - people will “forget” the hassles they’ve had/heard of and again start to trust that the services will be there and see Nuon as a serious provider. With the deregulated energy market, people HAVE the option to switch providers, but since this involves some work, people tend not to do it unless they are actually moving house - and this might increase people’s propensity to stick with (or even change to?) Nuon.
