Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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18 | JULY 2019 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk The Works Customer experience will be able to choose their preferred contact channel and receive communica- tion in that way: for younger people who are social media natives, this might mean receiving a response on Twitter even if the contact is during evenings and weekends. Online billing portals and web chat services will also be under scrutiny: the usability of a water company's website is exactly the sort of issue that might not result in a traditionally formulated complaint but could result in negative customer perception as measured by C-MeX. In particular, metered customers want to be able to access consumption data through a website or app, an expec- tation that has been raised by experience in other sectors. Complaints handling Currently, complaints handling – which was previously measured under SIM – is not a component of the C-MeX score itself but a 'gateway' that water companies that score well on C-MeX must pass before they are entitled to the higher levels of incentives available. However, some commentators have concerns that this may not be sufficient to drive improve- ments among water companies that have performed poorly on complaints. "Ofwat is describing the complaints • CASE STUDY: SOUTHERN WATER Southern Water has historically been one of the lowest performers on customer service as measured by SIM, but it has set itself the goal of being above the industry average on C-MeX by the end of AMP7 in 2025. Its business plan for 2020-25 is to offer a "refreshingly easy customer experience" and central to this will be five customer experience propositions: Reach & Support, Spring, Make it Count, Solutions, and Valuing Water. 'Reach & Support' is a strategy to proactively identify vulnerable customers and provide them with targeted support, financial and otherwise. 'Spring' will make it easier to access information, such as water consumption data from meters, through a customer's channel of choice. 'Make it Count' is an initiative to make customer interactions easier, with proactive communications keeping customers informed and up-to-date. 'Solutions' is a drive to make service more personalised, for example in billing; while 'Valuing Water' is about creating partnerships with customers and giving something back to the local community. The water company is stepping up its social media presence with a service that will inform and reply to customers throughout evenings and weekends; it says that it expects 70 per cent of household customer interactions to be digital by 2025. Discounts will be available to customers that carry out certain activities online. "We know that many of our customers like the convenience of being able to manage their bill online," Mark Field, head of billing and collections at Southern Water, says. "That's also great for us as we can reduce our back-office costs and then pass savings on to customers – it's a win-win. We are developing a new discount model through which customers can save money by using our online portal. Some customers may feel comfortable carrying out certain activities online but may prefer some additional support from us with other things. With our discount framework, they can choose whatever works for them and can easily understand what level of discount they will receive as a result. Customers can receive discounts for online sign-up, paperless billing, submitting meter readings, direct debit, and clearing their balance in full and on time." get addressed – it's important there is still an incentive to drive complaints down, as well as incentivising satisfaction more generally." More broadly, CCWater would also like to see the incentives and penalties for C- MeX given greater weighting compared to other ODIs, so that customer service will be seen as a priority by water companies. Accessibility and personalisation Water companies would appear to have their work cut out to achieve higher-quar- tile customer satisfaction compared to other sectors, and hence gain the highest level of incentive payment: not one water company featured in the top 50 compa- nies of the latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index published in January 2019. One area the sector can focus on for improvement is the provision of accessi- ble, frequently updated information. Just as the customer of an online retailer can log in to their account to view the status of an order, water customers could expect to be able to view the progress of a com- plaint, an operational issue or ongoing work that affects them, without having to repeatedly contact the water company. Customers might also expect their wa- ter company to personalise their service, for example by spotting when customer usage data indicates a possible customer- side leak, or by providing bills that compare an individual's usage against the local average. Whether these type of initiatives will be enough to raise water companies in the cross-sector customer service stakes remains to be seen, but they are likely to give utilities that pursue them the edge on the new C-MeX measure, and at a time when the future ownership of the industry is being debated, help build the water sector's reputation for customer focus in the future. element as a gateway, in that companies have to have a satisfactory complaints handling performance to get the financial incentives," Steve Hobbs, senior policy manager at the Consumer Council for Water, says. "Our concern is that that needs to be looked at and strengthened. It would be perverse if you saw a company that was average or declining on com- plaints managing to get good scores on the two satisfaction surveys and achiev- ing financial rewards. That's an issue with the design of C-MeX which we hope will