Four companies warned by water watchdog over complaints

The Consumer Council for Water (CCWater) has written to four water companies urging them to improve their handling of customer complaints, despite an overall downturn in complaint numbers.

As with previous years, billing dominated complaints and there was a marked rise in people complaining about water services – up 28 per cent – with extreme weather being blamed for the surge in disgruntled customers.

Overall complaints fell during 2018/19, however there was an increase in written complaints, which CCWater called “disappointing” because “companies do not seem to be learning from their mistakes.”

Almost half of all contact related to billing and charges, but the sharpest rise in complaints were those related to water supply. There was 28 per cent year-on-year rise to 19,564 complaints and sewerage issues up by 11 per cent. Complaints about metering fell 2.3 per cent.

Generally all companies received far fewer written than telephone complaints, however the number of people having to write more than once to resolve an issue was up 60 per cent. Written complaints rose by almost 8 per cent from 69,324 to 74,689.

Four companies – Thames, Hafren Dyfrdwy, Northumbrian and Essex and Suffolk – were contacted for exceeding CCWater’s trigger point. Each received more than 25 per cent above the industry average for telephone and/or written complaints per 10,000 connected properties and reporting an increase on the previous year.

Northumbrian saw a rise of 13 per cent for telephone and 65 per cent of written complaints, largely due to the implementation of a new billing system. Its subsidiary Essex & Suffolk saw written complaints double over the year for the same reason while its telephone complaints rose by 28 per cent.

The volume of calls resulted in longer customer waiting times and subsequently more abandoned calls, which impacted on numbers of complaints for both companies. The companies responded by hiring extra staff to deal with the increased level of customer contact.

Customer director at Northumbrian, Claire Sharp, described the figures as disappointing but representative of a “very temporary setback”.

“Historically, we have always been one of the industry’s best performing companies when it comes to customer service, with the highest levels of customer trust and satisfaction, which we’re incredibly proud of,” Sharp said.

The company invested £36 million last year to replace outdated technology with a major new customer service system to improve ease and speed of customer experience.

It will work with CCWater and continue to share its plans as it strives towards further improvements.

Thames Water saw both written and telephone complaints rise, with written complaints up 24 per cent and phone calls up 10 per cent year-on-year. The company, which made improvements in the previous reporting period, is engaging with CCWater to rectify its issues.

The company said the cold winter and hot summer created a “perfect storm that had an unacceptable impact on its customers”.  Kelly Macfarlane, customer experience director, said: “We feel and regret that deeply, and have already taken action to improve service and get things right first time for our customers when they need us.”

These improvements include a billing and account management system, staff training and a new customer website.

Macfarlane said: “These improvements will create the right foundations for us to meet our customers’ needs and expectations, whether they are contacting us or self-serving online, and to achieve the targets we have set ourselves of significantly reducing complaints this year and beyond.”

Hafren Dyfrdwy, which was acquired by Severn Trent during the year, saw a steep rise in both written and telephone complaints relating to new bill layouts. Written complaints rose 154 per cent, working out to 47 per 10,000 connections – the most written complaints received by any company. It received 673 telephone complaints per 10,000 connections.

The company said it is aware of some issues for customers as it introduces new systems and processes.

“We’d like to apologise to everyone whose been affected by these changes, and assure them we’re confident they’ll see a much stronger performance now and in years to come.”

It has extended its customer contact hours and offers extra channels of communication, such as Twitter, Facebook and live chat.

CCWater said there were signs of improvement towards the end of the year.

Each company will be asked to provide detailed quarterly reports on their performance and highlight what actions they are taking to improve service and bring their complaint numbers down. Northumbrian and Essex and Suffolk, will also be asked to outline the benefits its billing system will deliver for customers and whether it met the organisation’s objectives.

The watchdog said it hoped challenging these four companies would lead to the same improvements seen at Bournemouth Water, which faced similar criticism for written complaints in 2015/16. It said Bournemouth had since “transformed itself into one of the industry’s best performers and reported further reductions in 2018/19, despite upgrading its billing system”.

Although Southern recorded the highest number of telephone complaints (1039 per 10,000 connections), its efforts to improve service resulted in a year-on-year fall overall. Telephone complaints were down 17 per cent and written complaints fell by 27 per cent.

Anglian Water remains the best performing water and sewerage company for calls to resolve problems, with the supplier also seeing its written complaints fall marginally. South East Water, South Staffs Water, Hartlepool Water and Wessex Water were also praised by CCWater for their performance.

Bournemouth greatly reduced its complaint numbers and had the lowest number of telephone complaints. South Staffs reported the lowest number of written complaints per 10,000 connected properties but a rise of 6 per cent of telephone complaints.

Other water only companies including Bristol, South East and Hartlepool performed well on telephone calls but less well in written complaints.

Following the 2017/18 results, CCWater requested quarterly reports from Southern SES and Bristol, all of which notably improved their performance.

From next year, complaint reports will include contact made with companies through other mediums such as social media, web chats and SMS. Also, CCWater will report an aggregate only of complaints made by telephone. From next month companies will report telephone complaints “based on how the customer felt at the end of the call, rather than the reason for the contact”.