Enerex - What it takes to be a “Good Energy Broker”?

What it takes to be a “Good Energy Broker”?

Facts: Deregulated energy markets are getting more competitive. There are thousands of brokers in the US. Differentiation is becoming increasingly difficult. End-use customers continue to become more educated.Knowing and excelling at what makes an energy brokerage firm great is more important now than ever before. Enerex is dedicated to helping our brokers stand out. So, we conducted a survey of our current sparkplug customers to better understand:

  • What end-use customers are looking for,
  • If sparkplug helps set them apart in the market place,
  • Some feedback on our company, Enerex and our product.

The results were quite interesting!

We all know price is at the top of end-use customers priority list, but outside of that, what do you think are the most important factors in choosing an energy brokerage firm? The three choices in bold below ranked at the top of our survey.

  • Registered with the state
  • Energy Commodity Product Offerings (Fixed, Flex, Index)
  • Other Product Offerings (Telecom, Water, Business Solutions)
  • Quarterly (or more frequently) custom touch base to ensure billing correct/service level
  • Knowledgeable about supplier agreements
  • Testimonials from your existing customers
  • Less than 24 hour response time when customer calls with a question
  • # of supplier relationships
  • Other Energy product Offerings (Solar, Storage, Lighting, Bill Audit, HVAC, ect)
  • Other Product Offerings (Telecom, Water, Business Solutions)
  • Contacting customer for renewal pricing at least 12 months in advance of contract end date
  • Strong Proposal Format when soliciting quotes
  • Fee Transparency – Broker margin
  • Less than 72 hour turn around on pricing quotation (instant when Matrix pricing)

How much does sparkplug help brokerage firms stand out in these three areas?

When asked from a scale of 1-7, how much sparkplug helped in each area, the above % chose 6 or 7. Through our proposal management generation tool, activity and pipeline management, contract management, renewal notifications and several other tools, we aim to improve each end-use customer interaction our brokers have.

Another popular indicator of customer satisfaction is Net Promoter Score. If you are not measuring this for your business – here is a quick tutorial. According to npsbenchmark.com, IT companies average a +58 NPS. When asked the question, “how likely are you to recommend sparkplug to your friends and colleagues”, sparkplug customers gave us an NPS of 80 (out of a possible 100) with no detractors!

Cost is of utmost importance to end-use customers, so it’s important to brokers too! We asked our customers about sparkplug’s price versus value. Surprisingly, (56%) of our clients believe that sparkplug is priced exactly according to their expectations, and (44%) believed that sparkplug’s worth more than what they are paying today. Showing a glimpse of that:

Worried about Customer Service? Almost 70% of our clients have contacted our support team with queries and 90 % of the time their problems have been addressed and solved instantly (First-Call Resolution).

Although we are proud with these results, the Enerex team continues to strive to create the best Software as a Service platform for deregulated energy agents, brokers, consultants and suppliers. If you are interested in getting to know a bit more about Enerex, and our platform sparkplug, schedule a free no-obligation demo by contacting us.

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