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UTILITY Week 26th May 2017

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UTILITY WEEK | 26TH MAY - 1ST JUNE 2017 | 7 Interview I an McAulay likes change – a good trait for a chief executive in the water sector, which happens to be going through one of the biggest periods of change in its history. Southern Water's new chief executive was brought in to shake up the company, and that is exactly what he's done. Since he joined in January this year, the sen- ior management team has been overhauled. New blood and new structures have been imposed, designed to turn around long-standing trends of underperformance in fundamental business areas such as customer satisfac- tion, cost management and shareholder returns. In Southern's towering office building in Worthing on the south coast, McAulay greets Utility Week with a wel- coming smile. His office, unlike his approach to business, is traditional – neutral walls, desk, meeting table – no frills, but an open door to communicate accessibility. Unlike many sector chief executives, McAulay doesn't subscribe to the "we want to be the best water company in the world" mantra. His vision for Southern is simple: he wants the company to be respected by its regulators, loved by its customers and its staff, and admired by its competitors. Customer love would be hard to find today. Southern has consistently struggled to li its customer service rat- ings off the bottom of industry league tables. In Ofwat's 2015/16 service incentive mechanism report, it scored a measly 73 overall – although this represented a slight improvement on the previous year, it was still well below the industry average of 82.5. McAulay wants to change the way Southern performs, and he is determined that it is "seen as a customer ser- vices company". "We're building that into our consulta- tion for the next price review," he says. But there is no silver bullet. "I hate the question: 'What's the one thing that you'd do?' There is no one thing you can do to improve from being towards the bottom." The company has put in place better technology, such as an online service tool, to allow customers to interact with it in a digital format. It has also carried out a lot of staff training on voice interaction, telephone interaction and written interaction with customers, to make sure it keeps on improving. And these investments are already paying off. "I'm delighted to say that we're not at the bot- tom now for some of the customer complaints scores that have come through," says McAulay. "Which is good, but we are by no means satisfied, we've still got a long way to go. And as we improve, the other companies improve as well. "I speak to the other chief executives quite oen and, trust me, we look very hard at the scores. When they come through we are very determined to make sure that we keep improving." Since taking the helm of Southern at the beginning of the year, McAulay has separated the water and the waste- water units of the business, paving the way for a greater focus on the specific demands of each. He has also re- imagined the structure of the executive team, creating several new directorates, including one for compliance and performance, one for people and transformation, and one for commercial. "I want to have a more commercial approach within the company, to make sure that we can provide the right type of value for customers and do things in the right way," he says.

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