The Pioneer interview with... Vijay Tank

Taking E.On from worst to first

Back in 2011-2012, Vijay Tank helped lead the customer reset of energy giant E.ON in the UK. He did it with a mix of natural entrepreneurialism, an outward-looking perspective and a career in finance and accounting.

At the time, E.ON faced a number of challenges common to the energy industry, including criticism over poor service and rising prices. However, a new CEO intended to start again, and Vijay felt he had to make a difference, fast. And no external help was involved.

He did. It became one of the energy sector’s most successful customer transformations, taking E.ON from worst to first in customer satisfaction in just two years.

Q: Your career path has been a little unusual – moving between finance, customer operations, and now CCO roles. Can you tell us a little more about your background?

I’m a trained financial accountant but I'd describe myself as commercially and change-oriented rather than the traditional version. I started my career at Scottish & Newcastle, now part of Heineken, a really cool industry. I had a great time there and it gave me fantastic experience – the beer sector was going through a decline, people were moving from lager to wine or to AlcoPops, if older people remember them back in the ‘90s. So we had to transform the industry – reducing supply, rationalising breweries, consolidation, streamlining logistics. It was a very customer-facing business, as you can imagine. We were number one, market leader at the time, so we had to stay on top of game.

I then moved to KPMG Consulting. I’ve always been drawn to transformation challenges, energised by the question: how do we reset and drive performance?

Joining E.ON I moved from finance into customer transformation, then operations, supply chain, and now infrastructure. The common thread is always asking what does our market really need, and how do we deliver it better than anyone else?

Q: At E.ON you pioneered a dramatic shift to being customer-led. What prompted it, why was the reset needed?

We had a new CEO, Tony Cocker, who came from energy generation and had no energy retail experience whatsoever. This in many ways, was a strength. Tony was brilliant. He had a doctorate and was incredibly intelligent. He was also a strong introvert who really listened.

He told us his inbox was full of complaints. His elderly parents were telling him they couldn't understand their energy bills, and there was criticism from friends and family about confusing tariffs. Our data showed that we were the worst of the Big Six for customer satisfaction, and we had the highest churn rates.

Tony asked if I would be interested in being programme director for a reset. There was no design, no strategy, just him reeling off a tirade of customer frustration and asking how we could reset the organisation.

We didn't bring in consultants to give us theory. Instead, we went straight to the people closest to our customers – our frontline teams, the people taking the calls and working in customers' homes. Tony and I went on a roadshow, organising town halls with 50-70 people where we'd simply ask: "What's getting in the way of you doing a good job for customers? What's frustrating you?"

We adopted a ‘you said, we did’ approach, logging pain points and acting on them quickly. But we also did something quite brave – we set up customer immersion programmes. We invited customers who'd complained to evening meetings in neutral venues so they could share their stories.

These weren't polite focus groups. Customers shared very emotional, sometimes traumatic stories about the impacts on their lives – maybe getting a bill wrong, chasing debt that put them under stress, forcing difficult decisions. That got our people emotionally tuned in to the customer impact of our failures.

Q: You also established a customer council with high-profile external business leaders to help customer voices be heard. How did that work?

We set up this council alongside our UK board, with people like Allan Leighton, Paddy Tipping, one of Tony Blair’s colleagues, and Justine Roberts, who founded Mumsnet. We didn't pay them – they directed a donation to charity on their behalf. Their only job was to challenge us, to ask ‘are we making decisions that serve customers best?’

Allan would look at his father's eight-page energy bill and say, "It's electricity, right? Volume x price = a number in a box. Why is this eight pages long?" We'd say it's because of regulatory requirements, system limitations, it costs millions to change. He'd keep pushing: "No, you need to find a way."

Justine Roberts would say, "I'm a busy mum. Just tell me what the best deal is. I don't want to go around switching, just put the cheapest option in my face because I need to make my kids' dinner."

This constant challenge forced us to adopt three guiding principles: Are we making things simpler? Are we making things fairer? Are we being more transparent?

Q: How did you handle the business case discussions with finance?

Tony and I both had strong commercial and finance backgrounds which helped with decision ultimately made with Finance. The board took a more commercially orientated outlook.  For example, when everyone in the market was increasing prices, we froze prices to give customers reassurance. I knew we could hedge our volumes to eliminate risk, but it was still a bold move. I called the CFO on a weekend, and we went around the board on Sunday for a decision. Five out of six board members said no, too risky. Tony, ultimately showing his strength to re-shape the market and our reputation, backed the decision to freeze prices.

On Monday morning, I'd never seen E.ON so energised. There was this massive buzz because we were doing something different, bold, putting ourselves out there as a real leader.

Q: But how do you prove ROI on customer-focused investments when the metrics are often seen as 'softer'?

That was a challenge, and it required holding our nerve. We asked our marketing team each month about NPS performance, and it didn't move for 12-15 months. We started doubting ourselves, wondering if the reset programme was a waste of time.

But there's a lag effect. Eventually, it just rose and rose and rose. We went from sixth worst to having the best customer satisfaction in the industry within 2.5 years. Our churn became the lowest in the industry. That all flows into financials – you lose fewer customers, they're less confused about pricing and billing, so they're less likely to switch.

Organisations often want instant results, but customer transformation takes conviction and courage to stay the course when the immediate indicators haven't changed yet.

Q: What lessons have you taken from that experience that you still apply today?

Well firstly, organisations often overcomplicate things. The biggest and easiest thing you can do is spending more time with people closest to customers and markets. I was talking to the CEO of a high-street retailer last week, and 12 years later, he's doing something similar – going to frontline staff asking about their biggest pain points. A shoe salesperson saying, "I've got sizes 3-9, but most customers want 8 or 8.5, so why haven't I got those in stock?" It sounds obvious, but someone in procurement was buying what they thought was needed with no shopfloor experience.

Secondly, you need mechanisms that respond and act. People get frustrated if they keep raising issues and nothing happens. We had 97% internal awareness of our reset programme within six months across 8,000 people because I'd write updates every two weeks: "You said this, we've done that, we plan to do this."

Thirdly, anchor the customer voice in decision-making. After about a year, we introduced two frontline people to sit on the Customer board. When senior managers presented propositions, these people could say whether that actually matched what was happening on the phones or in customers' homes.

Q: Why do you think so many organisations struggle with being customer-led?

There are so many distractions now. Board conversations focus on managing financial performance in volatile markets, supply chain challenges, cost pressures. All of that takes you away from the core question: are customers buying from you and do they like what you do?

You rely on the rest of the organisation to make those customer decisions, but they're looking to leadership for guidance. If you're talking about supply chain or internal controls, they think that's what's important to you.

 Plus, if you're in a big company with shareholders reporting to capital markets wanting instant results, you have these constant short-term versus long-term pressures. The variables now are enormous - your direction might be the same, but the ability to maintain that focus becomes much harder.

 Q: Are there organisations you think are getting it right today?

That’s a difficult one. I often ask my teams: who do you enjoy buying from? Who do you want to do repeat business with? That's usually the best indicator.

Amazon and Apple get mentioned a lot, but I think there’s a lot to be said for companies like Next, who has survived 40 years in incredibly difficult retail circumstances. Or Zara, which has been strong at switching product and supply chain to meet customer needs very quickly.

I also think about smaller, purpose-driven companies. That personalisation and going the extra mile – like a wine retailer who recently refunded a bottle of wine I didn't like without being asked and then upgrading my order – those experiences make you think that you’re not just another statistic.

You've got to keep your eye focused on the customer, the market, the products, the proposition, the service quality. And you need to remain diligent about that focus. It's not easy in the current climate with so many competing demands. If you were an owner-founder of your business, you'd probably make these customer-first decisions naturally. Corporate structures create this need to see instant results, but customer transformation requires patience and conviction.

The most important people are those who serve your customers and are close to the market. Spend time with them, listen to what they're telling you, and then act on it. Everything else is just distraction from that fundamental truth.