A “disproportionately high” number of written complaints received by Thames Water skewed the sector’s overall performance in 2020/21, a report by CCWater has revealed.
The consumer group’s annual report compares the performance of water companies on the number of written complaints they received per 10,000 connections, as well as assessing how well complaints were handled.
It found that complaints from households to the water industry rose for the third successive year, with an 11% increase on 2019/20 (up from 84,649 to 93,758). Complaints to CCW rose by 5% from 6,752 to 7,076.
Billing was the most common issue for customers, with bills accounting for 67% of complaints and the majority of companies reporting an increase in this category.
Despite only supplying 19% of domestic connections, Thames Water accounted for 42% of the overall number of written complaints. Complaints about the company to CCW increased by a third to a rate almost twice that of the next worst performing company.
Yorkshire Water and Anglian Water were the only other companies that generated increased complaints to CCW.
Complaints performance – Water and sewerage companies
Thames has since made a series of commitments to CCW to improve its performance, including reducing complaints by a quarter this year.
Warren Buckley, customer experience director at Thames Water, said: “Our customers expect a great service from us every time, and we’re sorry when we fail to deliver at the first opportunity.
“Our aim is to always deliver brilliant customer service. It’s one of the biggest priorities of our plan to turn around our performance and we have already reduced written billing related complaints by over 20% since the beginning of April. We’re determined to do better, and while we’re heading in the right direction, we know there is a long way to go.
“We’ve been working closely with CCW to adopt and embed best practice across our organisation and have committed to reducing complaints across all our channels. We are investing in additional staff and implementing new policies to improve quality, including a new escalation team to proactively contact customers expressing dissatisfaction with our service.”
Elsewhere, Southern Water and Essex and Suffolk Water, which is part of Northumbrian Water Group, were two other companies which the report highlighted for poor performance.
Southern received the third highest number of written complaints per 10,000 connections of all water and sewerage companies.
While billing issues made up the bulk of its complaints, it also had the highest level of wastewater complaints in the industry. Complaints of this nature rose by 72% compared to 2019/20.
Additionally the company had the highest proportion of complaints not resolved at the first time of asking, meaning they were escalated. Later in the year, however, Southern discovered procedural issues that had caused a problem with identifying and recording these escalated complaints which it has since taken steps to address.
More positively the company did see complaints about its water service fall by 37% to the lowest level among all the water and sewerage companies.
Complaints performance – Water only companies
Essex and Suffolk Water is the only water only company that was rated poor both for the written complaints it received and its complaint handling.
Its performance was largely due to operational challenges caused by implementing changes to its systems at the same time the pandemic hit, resulting in high levels of billing and water complaints.
Compared to other water only companies it reported high levels of complaints that were not resolved first time and had to be escalated. It also had higher than average levels of complaints to CCW, with the proportion of billing disputes above the average for water only companies.
A spokesperson for Essex and Suffolk Water said: “At Essex and Suffolk Water, we pride ourselves in delivering the highest levels of service to our customers. Clearly the recent CCW report shows we have not always met this expectation and our performance was not good enough.
“Tackling the issues raised in this report is a top priority for all of us and we are making the necessary investments to turn this situation around. As the report noted, this was largely due to challenges caused by implementing new systems while Covid-19 started to affect our customers.
“We have invested in greater resources in our call centres, built stronger relationships across teams, empowered our colleagues to deal with complaints from start to finish and launched new channels for customers to get in touch. We believe this comprehensive approach will take us back to delivering the levels of service we want for our customers and we expect of ourselves.
“We are already seeing the positive impacts of our approach, with the latest water sector customer experience scores positioning us first in the industry on customer service.”
Despite challenges posed to the sector by Covid-19, nine water companies were still able to reduce their written complaints and Wessex Water and Hartlepool Water were the only two companies to receive top marks across the board for their complaint handling performance.
Emma Clancy, chief executive of CCW, said: “We’re heading into a difficult winter for many struggling households as they deal with rising energy costs and other financial pressures so companies must not allow water bills to add to customers’ worries.
“Households have a right to expect clear and accurate bills but water companies also need to improve their communication and do more to understand their customers’ needs. That way they can ensure customers facing hardship gain quicker access to the support that exists but often goes untapped.”