PR24 needs more focus on people, says Southern boss

The regulatory regime in water prioritises infrastructure ahead of investment in people, with negative consequences for customer service, according to Southern Water’s chief customer officer.

Speaking at a Utility Week webinar in conjunction with Capita, customer service chief Katy Taylor said this situation compares poorly with her previous experience in the transport sector. There, she said, regulators placed a lot of emphasis on people, investment in customer service, and employee engagement.

“You can’t run a train network without really engaged colleagues who know what they are doing. And in PR24, there’s nothing: nothing on people,” she observed.

Taylor added: “The water sector tends to focus on infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. Who are the people who are going to build the infrastructure and answer calls and generate bills? Your colleagues. There just isn’t enough focus on people in water.”

She also said there should be “a much greater focus on customers,” adding: “The reason that we are building assets is because they serve customers.”

Addressing the pressure water companies are under to cut operational costs and achieve better service ratings, Taylor also noted that there is a “sweet spot” to be achieved through investing first contact resolution so that call centre volumes can be reduced.

In wider debate about the ability of utility companies to gain customer trust, Taylor noted that rebuilding relationships with the public was hard due to the legacy of historical political attacks on the “character” of the sector.

She said the decision in 1997 by the then new Labour government to impose a wide-ranging “super tax” on utilities in a range of sectors had marked the beginning of a current culture of distrust and poor levels of customer satisfaction.

Tony Blair’s government introduced a windfall tax in 1997 on “excess profits” generated by utilities, a commitment in the Labour Party manifesto. The tax affected many companies privatised in the 1980s and early 1990s, including British Energy, British Gas, National Power, Powergen and Scottish Power, along with British Telecom and airports operator BAA.

Taylor said that ongoing negative media coverage of the water sector influenced customer ratings for trust and satisfaction even when service standards were good. “The journeys are exactly the same but we will see every single metric go down by six or seven points [after a negative story breaks]” she said.

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