Tepco aggressively woos new customers post-market liberalisation

The utility hopes to win them with new service plans.

When Japan's retail market underwent liberalisation in April last year, Tepco only had one goal in mind: to get more customers signing up with them.

Fast forward to almost a year since then, Tepco Energy Partner's managing director Rieko Sato said she believes the company has become successful in its pursuit of widening its customer base. She said this in a keynote session at The World Smart Energy Week 2017, wherein she also revealed that the comapny's call centers had been very busy taking up phone inquiries on their new and lighter pricing schemes. "Customers who have switched to other providers are now trying to reverse their decisions and come back to Tepco, and we've been taking up calls here and there to inform them of our new service plans," she said.

Tepco targets gaining 1 million customers with the new pricing plans to make up for the losses in greater Tokyo. This is in an effort to boost company figures as electricity sales revenues dropped 16.8% y-o-y to JPY 3,235.3b (US$28.4m) due to a decrease in the unit price electricity.

The World Smart Energy Week 2017 is currently being held in Tokyo, Japan from March 1-3, 2017.