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On Wednesday (1 April), when companies enact the their 2020-25 business plans, there will be a brand new criteria for customer service. However, watchdog CCW still has concerns that the C-Mex system could overlook complaints.
The consumer group said it welcomes the continuous improvements expected from the sector to qualify for performance rewards under C-Mex but Hannah Bradley, senior policy manager at CCW, explained one shortfall of the system is how it monitors complaint numbers.
Bradley said: “Our concern is that complaints don’t really feature. Companies could still hit their targets and get a really good C-Mex score with high numbers of complaints as long as they deal with them well.”
Although the handling of complaints is good across the sector, CCW is concerned the number of grievances could remain too high. For example, if a customer calls to remonstrate but is happy by the end of the call, it would not be counted as a complaint.
“The numbers of complaints are missing from the new standards,” added Bradley, who said CCW had challenged Ofwat that firms would be eligible for incentives despite having high numbers of complaints. She said Ofwat had no intention to review the system within AMP7.
Another major difference between the C-Mex and the previous SIM score system is that it will track all types of contact between billpayers and the businesses – not only written complaints.
Customer service satisfaction will be monitored for general enquiries or change of details as well as problems.
The rationale is to get a broader picture of how well a company interacts with its consumers and provide timely reports – every three months – on performance.
As well as a customer service surveys with scores from 1 – 10, the C-Mex scores will also rate consumer experience to gauge how happy people are with their water company.
Interactions such as email, telephone and online contacts can now be included. CCW worked with the industry to open up complaint channels and the C-Mex scores will see companies penalised for not offering sufficient ways for billpayers to get in touch.
Bradley explained there are three different ‘gateways’ companies must complete to get higher incentive payments.
They must have lower than average numbers of complaints, they must score well in both satisfaction surveys and score well against other UK Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) scores.
Bradley said businesses must have their score in the upper quartile of all sectors – not only against other water companies.
“They will be comparable to businesses like John Lewis or Asda. Although it’s a challenge for the sector, it’s a really positive step in showing customer satisfaction for water companies really should be up there with the rest of the pack,” she said.
The surveys will be carried out monthly and firms will receive quarterly reports on their performance, which will be published annually.
Bradley said companies are always keen to be able to see their results and it was initially proposed to make them available monthly, but the quality of data was deemed better over a three-month period.
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