Are You Still Spending Too Much Time on Your Utilities After Appointing a Broker?
Energy brokers, or third party intermediaries (TPIs) as they’re also known, can be invaluable to businesses of all types. They provide a crucial service and take the hassle and worry out of procuring and managing energy contracts. That leaves staff able to concentrate on their actual business priorities.
At Clifford Talbot Partnership, we’re proud of the all-around service we offer. We proactively seek to do as much for our clients as possible and ensure they always get the best deals. Some energy brokers operate differently. Either through laziness or lack of care for their clients, they provide a far more limited service. That leaves businesses having to spend more time on their utilities than they should.
Those TPIs can get away with this because many businesses don’t understand exactly what their broker ought to be doing for them. The following is a list of questions you need to ask yourself to discover whether you’re getting the best service from your broker.
Are You Still Dealing With Your Energy Suppliers?
In the course of a usual month are you still having to contact your energy suppliers yourself? Do issues with contracts, billing and supply still come through your office? If so, your energy broker is neglecting a key part of their job.
Brokers shouldn’t only negotiate an initial contract. They should also liaise with suppliers and smooth out any issues. You’ve outsourced your energy needs to a broker so that your time doesn’t get taken up by these kinds of problems.
Does Your Broker Understand Your Energy Priorities?
Your broker should know your firm’s priorities inside out. It’s the only way to negotiate the right contract. They need a full understanding of your energy usage, desired contract duration and everything else besides.
If they don’t have that understanding they can’t get you the best deal. What’s more, it means you will have to deal with the fallout of having initially had the wrong contract negotiated. Time spent asking suppliers to change payment terms or trying to get out of a bad contract is time wasted.
Do You Double & Triple Check Energy Invoices?
It makes sense for you to ensure that your energy invoices are accurate. Any mistakes can prove costly. Checking for those mistakes is something that good energy brokers will do on your behalf. You should have confidence that the invoices your broker negotiates and organises are correct.
If you don’t have that confidence, and worse if you find your invoices to regularly be in error, you may be with the wrong broker. Your current choice might be too lazy to do their job properly. Or else, they have a very narrow definition of what their job actually is. This factsheet from Ofgem offers some great advice on what to do if you do think you have a problem with your broker.
Do You Enjoy a Seamless Payment Process for Your Energy Bills?
Energy brokers should know to simplify the invoice payments process for their clients. They should also be knowledgeable enough to be able to do so. Invoices should arrive with your finance team in a standard format and with any and every internal reference they require.
If the process is not seamless, then it will take up more of your team’s precious time than it needs to. Your broker is simply not providing the best service possible.
Is it Quick and Easy to Contact Your Broker?
From time to time you will need to speak to your broker. Whatever your query is, it should be simple to reach your broker and talk about it. One phone call should connect you to the account manager who knows everything about you and your account. That account manager, too, should regularly be proactive and contact you. It can’t be a one-way street.
If you’re left leaving messages or speaking to people who can’t provide answers, it’s a problem. Not only does it waste your time, but it also suggests that there isn’t one contact with ultimate responsibility for your account.
Does Inefficiency Make Dealing With Your Broker a Constant Hassle?
The whole point of having an energy broker is to make your life easier. Appointing a broker should take the task of managing your energy supply off your desk entirely. That’s not much use if dealing with your broker becomes just as time-consuming as dealing with suppliers.
If your broker bombards you with forms to fill in and other extensive paperwork, they’re wasting your time. If they refuse to adapt to your preferred information or document formats, they aren’t doing their job.
If you find yourself losing time to any or all of the above issues, you have every right to be frustrated. Brokers who don’t make the lives of their clients as easy as possible, aren’t supplying the best service they can. Those who try to upsell and ask for extra fees for any of the above activities are basically pulling a fast one.
It doesn’t have to be like that. Clifford Talbot Partnership act as a one-stop-shop for all your utilities management services. We ensure that all your time can be spent on running and growing your business. If that sounds like your kind of arrangement, contact us today for a quote.
Steve Clifford is Owner of Clifford Talbot Partnership which was formed in 1984 to provide solutions to energy and utility management issues in commerce, industry, government and the public sectors throughout the UK.
