Customer care performance and improvements
We want to provide high standards of customer service and support for all our customers. We're committed to providing a seamless service so customers don't need to contact us. If things do go wrong we're here to help fix any problems.
To support customers struggling to pay their bills, we provide financial support schemes. Our Priority Services also provides an inclusive service for customers needing extra support.
Our performance is measured against Ofwat’s principles of customer care which includes:
Providing proactive communications
We've summarised our performance and the improvements we are making:
How we've performed
Over 88% of customers who contacted about water or wastewater work received updates. They were also told when the work was complete.
For customers with complex billing questions, we keep them up to date from start to finish. As an example, when we investigate a potential leak, we aim to let the customer know what we found within two days.
Our smart metering programme reached a significant milestone. Over 1 million smart meters were installed across our area. Smart meters help us understand our customer's water use. This means we can let customers know about leaks, helping them to save water and money.
We’re committed to improving our communications during major incidents. Water supply interruptions can impact thousands of customers.
What we're doing to improve
Incidents can impact thousands of customers. We know we’ve not always met our customer’s expectations and we’re working hard to improve our response. Going forward we're:
- Improving communications during incidents
- Investing in new systems
- Learning from previous incidents
- Being easier to contact
- Listening to what our customers tell us
Being easy to contact
We've summarised our performance and the improvements we are making:
How we've performed
We have two specialist customer contact centres which include:
- Operations who take calls for water and wastewater services
- Billing who take calls about customer bills and accounts
86% of customers who called our operations team, had their call answered within 30 seconds. This exceeded our target of answering 80% of calls within 90 seconds. Last year 4% of customers ended their call early, once again exceeding our target of 5%.
Between April and September 2023, it took an average of nearly five minutes to answer calls. This lead to 10% of customers ending their call before they were able to talk to one of our team.
We worked hard to improve this. During October to March on average, we answered billing calls in just over two minutes. This halved the number being ended early.
Many customers have chosen to contact us through live chat, WhatsApp or social media. By increasing the use of these channels, we’ve been able to resolve customer issues quickly. Therefore reducing the need for a phone call.
As a result, call volumes were 18% lower than last year and 35% of contacts received were through social media.
What we're doing to improve
We’ve got a wide range of communication channels including:
- Phone
- Webchat
- Letter
- Social media
This means our customers can contact us in the way that suits them.
We’ve continued to improve our digital journeys to meet customers’ expectations. This year we’ve introduced more digital and real-time channel availability.
Through our website we’ve improved how customers can self-serve online. Five types of issues can now be reported online. Three of these are automated and require no manual intervention from us. This speeds up the process for customers.
Water and wastewater
We've summarised our performance and the improvements we are making:
How we've performed
- Our water networks teams responded to 94% of customer issues on time. This exceeded their 85% target
- Responded to no water reports within 2.5 hours which was 1.5 hours quicker than our target of four hours
- Over 83% of wastewater network customer issues being responded to on time. This is below the target of 90%
- In 2023-24 we set the target of reducing water and wastewater complaints by 15% to 28,060. We received 25,161 complaints, exceeding our target for reducing complaints by 10%. We’re working hard to reduce the number of complaints we receive.
During 2023/ 24 we had 34 major water and wastewater incidents. This is less than the previous year due to our work to improve our assets.
Customers who have been impacted and qualify for payment have been compensated. This is through our Customer Guarantee Scheme (CGS). We recognise how incidents can impact our customers. This is why we'll continue to compensate customers through the CGS.
Our most significant incident occurred in November 2023. Storm Ciaran resulted in technical issues at water treatment works across Guildford. This impacted our ability to supply water to customers in Godalming and Guildford. The water supply returned intermittently. Some customers received water overnight for a short period.
We’ve committed to providing bill credits of £30 to all customers affected by this incident. Additional reviews of the experiences from customers have taken place. The outcome of these reviews has been communicated to customers.
What we're doing to improve
We're preventing repeat blockages in our sewer network, using a technique called jetting. This uses high pressure water hoses instead of long flexible metal rods. We’ve increased blockage clearance using jetting from 40% in 2020 to 85% last year.
Our turnaround plan has initiatives to:
- Improve our response to unexpected events and reduce supply interruptions
- Invest £93m to improve the resilience of Guildford's water supply. We'll be upgrading water treatment sites and laying a new 9km water transfer pipeline. This will help to keep the taps flowing for 9,000 homes
Billing
We've summarised our performance and the improvements we are making:
How we've performed
Our billing service didn’t meet the target set to reduce the number of complaints. We received 57,985 complaints which is too high.
The main reason for these complaints related to issues with metered bills. This is often caused by estimated meter readings.
What we're doing to improve
We’ll reduce complaints by improving the service that metered customers receive. These include:
- Providing more accurate bills by reading meters twice in the billing year. This will reduce unexpected bill variation
- Reducing the time it takes to fix the signal from a failed smart meter
- Improving our communication to make sure customers are kept up-to-date with their issue
- Enhancing the training of our front-line teams. This will help them support customers more effectively
- Improving first time responses to customer dissatisfaction, so customer complaints are resolved quickly
Understanding our customers' needs and providing appropriate support
We've summarised our performance and the improvements we are making:
How we've performed
Our insight programme has helped us to make sure we’re making decisions based on evidence. It also means that our plans and strategies meet customers' needs and expectations. Understanding our customer's needs allows us to understand where extra support is required.
We provide extra support to customers on our Priority Services Register (PSR). This year we aimed to have 350,000 households registered. In March 2024 we exceeded this target by 26%, with over 441,000 households registered. We've achieved this growth through our approach to data sharing with other organisations. This includes energy companies and the London Fire Brigade.
88% of PSR customers surveyed, were satisfied with the service they received. We also achieved the ISO standard for inclusive service. This upgraded the British Standard accreditation we've held for the previous three years.
What we're doing to improve
This year we will:
- Increase our courier vans from five to 25 when providing alternative water supply
- Add an extra 21 tanks that support reservoirs or feed water to the network. This stops the need for alternative supplies to be delivered
- Improve the tailored information for PSR customers on our website. Helping them understand the services they can expect to receive
Helping customers struggling to pay their bill
We've summarised our performance and the improvements we are making:
How we've performed
We've responded to the cost of living crisis by:
- Making it easier for customers to get help by adding a “struggling to pay” option on our call centre menu options
- Increasing customers on our social tariff from 307,000 to 358,000, providing £50m of support
- Responding to the cost of living crisis by creating a new extra support scheme. This provides £3m of support
We use an income and expenditure process to be be fair and consistent for financial support. This is provided by the free debt advice service PayPlan.
Last year we completed 24,000 reviews with customers and this year it’s increased to 61,000. This helps us to understand customer's finances and affordable payment plans.
What we're doing to improve
Next year we’ll increase the support provided by the extra support scheme to £7m.
We'll also review our social tariff eligibility criteria. This will make sure we're supporting customers most affected by the cost of living crisis.