Ofwat praises Anglian but penalises Thames

Thames Water has been penalised £100 million by Ofwat for low customer satisfaction scores, forcing it to shave even more from its PR19 allocation, which it has already called unfinanceable.

The regulator said the company must return the money to customers for being the lowest performer in the sector over a four-year period.

Thames Water recorded the lowest overall satisfaction score of 4.11 against an industry average of 4.39 in Ofwat’s service incentive mechanism (SIM) scores.

The company implemented service improvements across its business and has reported a 10 per cent drop in complaints since April with plans to reduce by 20 per cent by the end of its financial year.

Anglian was named the highest overall score of 4.61, followed by Portsmouth and South West each with a score of 4.56.

These companies were also noted by CCWater for their handling of customer complaints. Anglian will receive an extra £16 million allocated for its PR19 business plans.

Ian Rule, the director of customer and wholesale services at Anglian said: “We put customers at the heart of everything we do – it’s the only way to achieve this sort of result.

“This result is proof that the commitments we’ve made to always take account of the communities we serve and the environment we protect when we make decisions is more than just warm words. It’s translated into action every day, and it is clearly being appreciated by our customers.”

Along with Thames, Hafren Dyfrdwy’s performance – with a score of 4.15 – was criticised by the regulator, despite it being newly formed during the year.

Overall, customers were significantly more satisfied with the handling of billing enquiries than either clean or waste issues and those with waste enquiries were significantly more satisfied than those with clean queries.

Queries about billing were most likely to be resolved and customers reported 81 per cent of all matters they contacted their company about were tackled.

Three in five (63 per cent) customers could not think of anything their water company could have done better.

Where an improvement was stated, a quicker response (4 per cent), keeping in contact, a quicker resolution of the query and fixing the problem (3 per cent each) were the main areas that customers felt could be improved.

Customers who contacted their water company online were significantly more likely to be satisfied with the handling of their matter than any other method of contact.

The service incentive mechanism (SIM) scores are based upon CCWater’s data on the number of complaints companies receive, and customers’ satisfaction with how companies handle and resolve issues.

From next year the SIM score system will be replaced by C-MeX system that will assess how satisfied customers are compared to their satisfaction with other services.