Improvements in water complaints skewed by Thames

Bournemouth, Bristol, United Utilities and Wessex have been praised by water watchdog CCW as the sector’s best performers on handling consumer problems in 2019/20.

CCW’s annual customer complaint handling report showed the highest level of disputes for four years at 84,649, which was skewed by a 57 per cent jump at Thames. Had the company held complaints steady on the previous year’s figure, the sector as a whole would have seen a reduction.

Thames attributed the additional 12,619 complaints to a new billing system and an IT issue. Kelly McFarlane, customer experience director, said the company was “not happy” with its performance and is determined to improve.

“We’re making progress, despite the challenges of the ongoing pandemic, and since last year we have completed a huge programme of work to move all of our 3.6 million households to a new online billing platform,” McFarlane said.

She acknowledged the issues the transition caused, and added: “Once optimised, I’m confident the capabilities of this new system along with changes to the way we work will help deliver the step change we need to continually improve the service we offer customers and reduce complaints.”

Thames was not the only company to see a rise in grievances, as this table shows:

Billing disputes including metering issues and debt recovery accounted for 65 per cent of complaints.

Written remonstrations fell in 2019-20 for two-thirds of water companies but the watchdog said “rapid improvement” is required from Southern and Thames as the only two companies to rate poorly across all CCW’s eight performance metrics.

Following a 22 per cent jump in written grievances Southern has, since April, implemented an improvement programme, which it said has lowered written issues by 18 per cent.

Head of customer service at Southern, Donna Howden, said the company knows it has more to do. Southern introduced Amazon Contact telephony and chat platform and an automated identification and verification system.

“We’re also using insight into our complaints to ensure we’re focusing on the changes our customers want to see,” Howden said. “As well as customer feedback, we’ll also continue to work closely with regulators and key partners to ensure we improve our service.”

CCW chief executive Emma Clancy said: “Consumers’ expectations of their water company are very simple – they want accurate, affordable bills and a service they can always rely on but some suppliers are still not getting the basics right.”

“It’s encouraging most of the industry is heading in the right direction but we want to see a big reduction in the large number of disputes over bills which still cause many customers enormous frustration, as well as resolving more complaints at the first time of asking.”

Last year CCW challenged Northumbrian, Essex and Suffolk Water and Hafren Dyfrdwy to improve their complaint handling.

The watchdog said each has taken “significant strides” to reduce problems. Hafren Dyfrdwy reduced the proportion of complaints needing escalation but remained in the poor performing quartile. Likewise, Northumbrian and Essex and Suffolk received fewer criticisms but remained low compared to peers.