Norway’s Best Service for Electricity Customers: “It Means a Lot to Us”

“We work for our customers every single day, and when those same customers vote us all the way to the top, it naturally means a great deal to us,” says Sanjin Pekusic, Head of Customer Service at Fortum in Norway.

KSIndeks is Norway’s largest and most representative customer service study. Based on data from Kantar, 20,000 people are interviewed throughout the year about their experiences with Norwegian customer and user service centers. These customer experiences form the basis for the KSIndeks results KSIndeks results - External link.

The Year of ‘norgespris’

In the electricity category, this year’s award may be especially prestigious. This was the year when the biggest single change in decades was introduced: norgespris.

The government’s fixed-price electricity scheme created a surge of calls to customer service.

“There were many thousands more inquiries every week than normal. There are also not many among the more than one hundred electricity suppliers that offer customer service, so we also received calls from customers of other companies — and we helped them all regardless,” Pekusic says, before continuing:

“You do not always need customer service. The app works. The invoice is understandable. But when questions arise — the ones you cannot find the answer to yourself — there are people who have spent years building knowledge and learning how to explain fairly complex things like electricity and electricity support schemes in a way people can understand,” he says.

At Fortum’s customer service center, they answered more than 23,000 inquiries in October alone last year, and by the end of the year they had responded to more than 250,000 inquiries.

Focus Areas

Fortum has been in the final for best customer service in the electricity sector for four years in a row and last won in 2024 through the now-merged brand NorgesEnergi.

“This is a wonderful recognition from our customers and gives us strong motivation to continue our work to create good customer experiences in the future. Recognition like this is something you have to keep earning continuously, and we have dedicated employees who work hard every single day to provide the service customers expect. Finding a solution to the reason why the customer contacts us is the most important task our customer advisors have,” Pekusic explains.

Read also: Inside Fortum’s customer service center

He goes on to say that they have had several focus areas they have worked hard on:

“It has been a year with a strong focus on electricity and electricity prices, especially in connection with Norgespris. What we have focused on is making sure we set aside enough time and are good at listening to the challenges customers face. I also believe that is part of the reason behind the jury’s statement that we are perceived as fair. During the Norgespris period, we chose to take a position not only for our own customers, but for the entire industry. A key point for us is how important it is to add value to the customer relationship in our conversations,” he says.

The Value for Customers

These focus areas and the overall approach are also reflected in the feedback customers provide.

Among other things, the award presenters said about Fortum: “Customers say that the winner delivers best in class on a basic human need: being treated fairly. Customers also greatly appreciate the customer advisors’ ability to understand their challenges.”

“This shows that customer service is a service many customers value, and something we also strongly believe in at Fortum. Everyone needs electricity, but not all electricity customers are the same. There are different needs, and many still need to speak with real people,” Pekusic says.