Water retailers ‘over-promised to customers’

Water retailers in the non-domestic market have been guilty of over-promising and under-delivering to customers, a Utility Week conference has heard.

Nish Dattani, the managing director of retailer, First Business, told the Water Customer Conference today (23 January) that much of the reputational damage in the market had been self-inflicted.

Meanwhile, Claire Yeates, director at water management specialist, WaterScan, accused retailers of seeking to blame “legacy issues” for ongoing problems around accurate consumption data.

However, there was consensus among speakers that after almost three years the industry is finally uniting to move in the right direction.

As evidence of this, Consumer Council for Water (CCWater) data for Q3 2019 is set to show complaints falling for the third consecutive quarter.

In his presentation, Dattani asked whether retailers had delivered on the mission statement at market opening in 2017 –  to create “a vibrant business retail market that delivers good outcomes for customers, saving them money, water, and time”.

He said: “Customers can definitely see the benefit in terms of interacting with the market but too often retailers have been at fault in terms of what they have offered customers. Once you set a certain level of expectation you need to deliver on it. If you break a promise you have made it clear you don’t really value your customers’ priorities.”

Phil Marshall, deputy chief executive of CCWater, said the complaints received by the watchdog continued to centre around “the basics”.

He added: “When the market opened there was an assumption that the complaints we might see would be about the market – switching, players in the market doing things that might be seen as immoral – because that was the case possibly in energy when that market opened. But, in fact what we saw was about getting the bills right, getting meter reads not estimates. It is to some degree about the customer service that goes around that.

“Things are definitely moving forward – perhaps not as quickly as we would have liked but they are moving.

“We are just about to publish Q3 data and for the third quarter in a row, complaints to us are down. That’s a huge difference to where we were a year ago – where complaints were five times higher than before the market opened. We are now seeing the work all of those involved in the market are doing to resolve those issues making a difference.”

He went on to say:  “Consumers need to be empowered to get the most out of this market. We are not there yet, especially with SMEs. Those making the most of the opportunities presented by the market still tend to be the larger players.”

This view was echoed by Yeates, who talked about one of the key points of friction in the market – meter reads.

She said: “I have a real issue with the focus on legacy. The issues with meter reads are not a problem from market opening. Yes, the data wasn’t perfect and because the market had to open on time the software was developed slightly later than anticipated. But CMOS (Central Market Operating System) was what we expected it to be. This blame culture of – it’s not us it’s CMOS, it’s not us it’s the wholesaler – I struggle with that.”

Meanwhile, Simon Bennett, head of wholesale services at Bristol water and chair of the Retailer/Wholesaler Group, confirmed the Retailer Measure of Index will be incorporated into the market codes by April. R-Mex will be a market-wide survey completed cyclically by retailers