Utility Week

8 | 16TH - 22ND FEBRUARY 2018 | UTILITY WEEK Interview Northumbrian Water was one of the three creators of the market operator, along with United Utilities and Anglian Water – and asked to lead the company's business retail arm. For Darch, the opportunity was too tempting to pass up. NWG Business was already set on using a billing system provided by New Zealand soware company Gentrack. Darch had prior experience with the system and appears dedicated to it, name-drop- ping it throughout the interview. The use of the system may have been a big reason Darch joined NWG Business – then still part of Northum- brian Water – in October 2015. However, she admits she was also drawn to the buzz of being in "rapid fire" mode, with just one-and-a-half years to go until the market opened. "Where there's a challenge, there's also a lot of potential enjoyment because it feels very rewarding to go through the steps to take you into the market, and with a small, very agile team." How is the process of integrating NWG Business and Anglian Water Business going? Darch says it is currently in the "design stage", with pre-migration development due to commence in April. The company is running a series of 30 workshops to ensure the processes AWB currently uses are translat- able into that new Gentrack system. Where there are any gaps, Darch says, the company will make sure that the system can address these before migration begins. "It's been a great opportunity for the experts across the busi- ness to come together," she says. "It's been a nice stage, getting to know everybody in both businesses, and it'll probably take us a few months to get that done." Beyond optimising IT, how does Wave plan to make its mark on the market? "It's quite simple," she says. "Our vision is to be the most customer-focused utility delivering value and efficiency." Darch lays out three strategic goals that will allow the company to get there. The first is to excel in engage- ment with employees, and ensure Wave is somewhere rewarding to work so that staff stay and provide excellent customer service. "We have a good track record in that space," she says. The second is to be leading when it comes to net pro- moter score and customer experience, where the meas- ure that matters most to Darch is "would you recommend us". "These two things will lead to us growing," she says, "which is happening already." Finally, Darch's plan is to "build a great reputation" for Wave in the market – both as a retailer and as an effi- ciency partner. In this area, the retailer has got off to a good start. Since April 2016, AWB has delivered £2.7 mil- lion savings to customers, made up of £2.4 million of consumption savings and £300,000 of charges reduction. Wave plans to gain further prestige in the market by offering a multi-utility service. Before the announcement of the joint venture, AWB partnered with business energy supplier Corona Energy to offer business customers a tri-utility supply of water, gas and electricity. Darch says this partnership is still very much alive. "Corona is work- ing with Wave, offering a white label service. The com- pany is offering a good level of service." It is early days, and it is unclear what the level of customer take-up will be, but Darch says Wave is seeing demand from its SME (small and medium-sized enter- prise) portfolio for multi-product bundles. Will Wave be branching out into other markets? Tel- ecoms perhaps, or broadband? Darch doesn't rule this out, but for now, she says, it is too soon to tell. Darch believes passionately that retail- ers need to improve the level of service that customers experience. "In the utility mar- ket in general – gas, electricity and water – there's a bit of catch-up going on in terms of service," she says. But her plan is for Wave to offer customers a refreshingly good experience. "We've built [service] into our architecture, so we feel very much that we can deliver at a level that a customer may not have experienced before." In the past, the process for providing a duplicate bill has taken five days. However, Darch says, at Wave, they can email a copy of a bill to a customer while they're on the phone. "There are lots of efficiency gains we can give to customers," she says. "Customers want things solved there and then. Utility companies oen talk about first- time resolution – if you can deliver on that, you are deliv- ering a notably better experience." Darch's concerns about the market as a whole are in keeping with those of other senior water retail execu- tives. Namely, a lack of standardisation in wholesaler policies and bilateral communication with wholesalers. She also says unmetered charges are a problem. "I guess it's my background in energy, but I struggle with unme- tered charges a little bit." She insists there is a need for more metering in water to make things "more transpar- ent" for customers. "There's some work to do there." Darch hopes the industry can "continue to evolve". "It's understandable that not everything was solved on day one, but we need to challenge ourselves to keep going and make things better." And who's responsibility is it to solve the issues? "I think the aligning of wholesaler policies is one we need regulatory involvement in," says Darch. "Whereas the bilateral communications is probably one we need to group together and solve." She praises MOSL for doing a "great job" getting the central system ready for the market. "I think it was a really great achievement for the water industry that the market opened on time and with reasonably good levels of customer experience." However, now that the market is in full swing, par- ticipants cannot expect MOSL and Ofwat to "solve eve- rything". "We need to group together and make sure we keep a conversation going to try and push the industry to improve." Looking ahead, Darch believes household competi- tion is coming – it's just a question of when. The government first mooted the idea of domestic competition in 2015, when it proposed the market should open by 2020. Since then, few updates have been given on government's thinking about the proposal, causing some to speculate that it has been quietly dropped by the new administration. "It has gone quiet," Darch agrees. "And I guess Brexit is, quite rightly, taking priority." However, she says, "it would be, for me, rather strange if the household market didn't deregulate, because I think there will be things about the non-house- hold market that [suggest] it is positive for customers". "For me it's a question of when. I don't think it'll happen any time soon." If and when household competition does come in, Wave may look to participate. But for now, the compa- ny's attention is squarely on growth and success in the non-household market. Lucy Darch will be speaking at the Future Retail #1 conference in London on 23 March. For more information visit: utilityweek.net/futureretail1 "It would be, for me, rather strange if the household market didn't deregulate."

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