We have 6.2m residential gas and electricity accounts and employ around 7,200 staff. Our key sites are Worcester, Kingswinford, Oldbury, Solihull, Leeds and Stoke. All five contact centres are based in the UK - three in Peterlee, one in Rainton Bridge, Sunderland and one in Thornaby, Teeside. We can speak to customers in Urdu, Punjabi, Welsh, Gujerati and Chinese.

In July 2010, independent research group IPSOS Mori confirmed npower was fastest at answering phones. The research involved 100 telephone calls made to each of the big six suppliers and results show that we're faster by nearly 25 seconds.

Every year, we issue over 22m bills and answer around 12m calls. Our new bill layout received a Crystal Mark from the Plain English Campaign – we’re the first energy supplier to receive this.

We also supply electricity and gas to businesses of all sizes. Our customer base exceeds 217,000 business sites and includes household names Astra Zeneca, Ikea, M&S, and BT. This area of the business employs around 1,000 staff. The largest customer service and operational team is in Hull, East Yorkshire (650 employees). This centre specialises in the SME market i.e. small to medium sized enterprises or customers.

The Solihull office in the West Midlands houses teams who look after larger customers, the mid market and third party consultants and a specialist gas team. There are also support and managerial teams based in Solihull, Leeds and a further 150 staff who are based either from home or from a satellite office (e.g. Swindon, London and Kingswinford).

MeterPlus is npower’s metering services business in the North of England, Yorkshire and in some parts of the East Midlands. The company makes around 22m visits a year to read and install meters. A meter reader walks between five and ten miles a day.