Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 13TH - 19TH JULY 2018 | 7 News plaints received, giving substantial savings in water charges to customers. Castle Water's continuing investment in customer service can be seen in the increasing proportion of five-star reviews on [online businesses review website] Trustpilot – these are now 50 per cent of all reviews," he insists. CCWater registered the customer com- plaints under seven main categories: administration, billing and charges, retail competition, metering, water, sewerage and "other". Most complaints (64 per cent) were about billing and charges, compared with 53 per cent the year before. The consumer group suggests some retail- ers appear to have "underestimated staffing requirements", which has led to customers being unable to contact their retailer or get a timely response to a written complaint. "As a result, we received a high level of NHH [non-household] customer complaints about administration issues, like poor experiences in trying to deal with their retailer," says the water watchdog. Taking action Wave director of customer experience Lissa Balmer says that, aer the opening of the non-household retail market in April last year, and the subsequent creation of Wave – a joint venture between Anglian Water Business and NWG Business – the company "recognised that there were some challenges as customers migrated to their retailer and as new billing systems were embedded". "We responded swily to these challenges and made a firm commitment to deliver an excellent service experience for our custom- ers," she adds. "We are now ten months into the joint venture, as Wave and our team is focused on resolving queries quickly and effectively." Meanwhile, Water Plus's new chief executive Andy Hughes says the number of complaints is higher than the company wants and, in response to the challenges and changes in the new market in England, it has carried out a number of actions. "We have increased investment in our systems, processes and people, significantly increas- ing the number of people in our call cen- tre, to reduce any delays for customers and enhance the services for our new and exist- ing customers." Waterscan received no complaints in the survey. This is because it doesn't have any customers as such, having gained its retail licence to act as a partner to businesses that opt to self-supply. The company's manag- ing director Neil Pendle says the company had expected an increase in complaints from business customers in the first year of the market so, although disappointing, the results of the survey are not surprising. "Most of this could be put down to increased expectations from customers and retailers over promising services like free AMR and paperless billing." When a customer has exhausted a com- pany's complaint procedure and remains dissatisfied, CCWater has the statutory power to investigate that complaint – which it says is a serious intervention. The consumer watchdog investigated 28 complaints against retail companies in 2017/18, compared with just seven investi- gations for the whole industry in 2016/17. More than half (17) of its investigations were against Water Plus. "We were concerned that some NHH com- plaints were taking much longer to resolve than they should," the group says in the report. "We noted that some retailers had a high number of cases that were still out- standing aer more than eight weeks with CCWater. As we only receive a subset of mar- ket complaints, we were concerned that a lot of customers were dealing directly with their retailer and making little progress in reach- ing a resolution." Delays were "sometimes due to ineffi- cient communication between the retailer and wholesaler" – a well-documented prob- lem in the water retail market, and one that MOSL's digital strategy committee is working to resolve. CCWater recorded 7 per cent of its NHH complaints against wholesalers where it felt they were the predominant company causing customer dissatisfaction. However, CCWater complaints are only a small subset of the market total, and retailers deemed 23.3 per cent of written complaints to be partly or fully a wholesale issue. Now for the good news It's not all bad news. Most of the market's retailers, CCWater says, appear to have "adapted well" to competition and avoided many of the service problems encountered by the poorer performers. CCWater says it received no complaints at all about 10 of the retailers. Although the consumer group does point out that some of these retailers had very few or no SPIDs [supply points] at the time of its analysis, because they had received their licences near the end of the financial year. Among the best performers were SES Business, Water2business, Affinity for Busi- ness and Dee Valley Water, which is based in Wales where there is currently a limited com- petitive market. Water2business managing director Char- ley Maher tells Utility Week that the key to the company's success is its employees, who are "passionate about what they do and are on hand to provide expert advice". "Of course, we are human and don't always get things right, but what's important is learn- ing from this to ensure it doesn't happen again," she adds. "While we'd like to reduce complaints further, we're delighted with our industry-leading performance, which I am sure will be important when it comes to cus- tomers switching their water retailer." What next for retailers? Water Plus's Hughes says there is still a lot of work to do for all participants to make the market more effective for customers, and insists the company "continues its efforts" to improve processes that affect them. "Cus- tomers should start seeing the benefits of our investment in the next few months," he adds. "We are actively working with other retail- ers and wholesalers to make the market work better for customers, and we continue to work and liaise with the Consumer Council for Water on customer complaints. Water Plus is leading the way in setting up forums, engag- ing directly with the Wholesale Retail Group and UK Water Retail Council to progress spe- cific key issues to help speed up responses to customers and ensure better and quicker resolution of complex complaints." Waterscan's Pendle believes we have seen the high point in complaints, and perfor- mance has started to improve – albeit slowly. "Poor quality data remains the number one cause of complaints and retailers have to invest now to gain control and start deliver- ing on their promises." One thing is clear – the poorer perform- ers must come into line with their better-per- forming competitors, and fast, or they could lose customers. NHH CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS TO CCWATER 2012/13 1,071 2013/14 1,041 2014/15 928 2015/16 883 2016/17 824 2017/18 2,780 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 0

• Cover