Customer satisfaction, trust and value for money
We have an ongoing commitment to listen to what our household customers think of the service we offer. So, each year we contact a representative sample of people and ask for their views. Throughout the year 2022/23, 81% of our customers told us that they are satisfied with the overall service they receive. You can find out more below about how we plan to improve customers’ satisfaction with our services.
See how 569 customers rated us between June 2022 and March 2023
| |
2018/19
annual score |
2019/20
annual score |
2020/21
annual score |
2021/22
annual score |
2022/23
annual score |
| Proportion of customers who are satisfied with our service |
87% |
85% |
83% |
82% |
81% |
The score is made up of the percentage of customers who rated us: 'very satisfied' or 'satisfied' with the overall level of service offered.
2022/23: 569 household customers, contacted between June 2022 and March 2023.
2021/22: 569 household customers, contacted between June 2021 and March 2022.
2020/21: 562 household customers, contacted between June 2020 and March 2021.
2019/20: 400 household customers, contacted between June 2019 and March 2020.
From 2019/20 onwards, all phone and online interviews conducted by independent agency Turquoise Thinking.
2015/16 to 2018/19: 300 household customers contacted each year. Phone interviews conducted by independent agencies, DJS Research 2015/16 and Accent Market Research 2016/17-2018/19.
Every year, a representative sample of customers by age, gender and social status is surveyed.
What’s happening next?
By looking through all of the feedback that customers give to us - be it by phone, email, website, social media or by being a member of our H2Online community - we can identify opportunities to improve the service we offer.
“I have difficulty in getting hold of them and there is no follow up to emails.”
"We have a lot of people from different countries around here, a lot of older people and problems with money, so I think a local presence who understands the area and can be there to help if needed would be great."
"They need to introduce more ways for customers to pay their bills."
Over the past two years, we have listened to customer feedback and responded by putting a number of changes in place.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the rising cost of living, we:
- launched payment breaks in April 2020, giving payment holidays for up to three months, which we still continue to offer customers in 2023
- launched two new discounted tariffs in 2020 (Assure Assist and Assure COVID-19) to support low-income households, in different situations, to pay their water bills, which we continue to offer to customers in 2023
- made changes to our bill reminder letters; making them more friendly, easy to understand and highlighting, more clearly, the support we offer
- improved our website to make it easier to find information, apply for extra financial support and register for extra support via our Priority Services Register
- Sent out more regular email communications to customers, as part of our 'Here for you' campaign. These remind customers about the support we offer and how they can manage their bills and access our services. Our most recent campaigns focus on how customers can reduce their hot water use to save on their energy bills.
We have also:
- launched a new service called 'Get Water Fit' in partnership with the water-saving experts, 'Save Water, Save Money'. Since November 2020, this service is helping customers to understand where they are using water in their home, and what they can do to save water. There is also a free home audit available via Zoom, where customers can ask an expert questions on how they can best save water. Find out more
- Moved to a new billing system, which means that customers on a water meter can now enter a meter reading to generate a bill at any time, which removes previous limitations
- continued to operate a new system to proactively help customers who need support with their bills, including making more calls to customers that may have experienced increases to their bills, and helping to explain the changes, to make sure they are on the best possible payment plan
- our Community Hub in Wednesbury has now welcomed over 17,000 customers through its doors since opening in April 2018. Some customers have been clear that they only want to talk to us face-to-face
- increased our community team numbers, so that we are able to run a 'mobile Community Hub' service where we hold regular sessions in towns local to our area of supply. We are now exploring options to improve this service into 2023
- before the COVID-19 pandemic, our education team visited primary schools to teach over 5,000 children how to 'use water wisely'. We have introduced additional ways to continue engaging with schools, including virtual assemblies and workshops, which has helped us to reach thousands more pupils since April 2020. When the lockdown lifted in 2021, the education team resumed its school visits, as we continue working towards our target of engaging with over 6,000 pupils each year
- recruited more specialist leakage engineers to help us identify and fix leaks quicker and updated the messaging on our fleet of vans to remind customers about our services and how to contact us
- given customers the ability to report a bereavement of a family member or friend online. We previously only offered this service by phone.
In addition to our regular customer service surveys, we have also spoken in detail with hundreds of customers to find out how we can improve our service. We focused on how we can offer a better experience when a customer moves home, reports a leak, wants a meter fitted or encounters a water supply issue.
"They need to help me out more with paying my bill"
“I find their bills confusing, please make them simpler”
“I have to reset my password every single time. It doesn’t recognise my reference number. Takes me 10 minutes to pay bill. Please fix this”
“I've got the app, please send me a push notification to say my bill is due.”
“They can improve by communicating, they called and told me they were coming to install the meter but nobody turned up.”
We are using this feedback to review how we can offer a quicker and more reliable service. These changes won’t happen overnight, but we are working on them. Some of the main areas we are focusing on over the next 12 months include:
- reviewing new options to support customers with paying their water bill
- launching the next version of our app and MyAccount online services to allow customers to manage more areas of their account by improving overall functionality to remove any issues customers are reporting
- launching a new bill format and layout with an online user guide to make your water bill easier to understand, based on our customers’ feedback
- investing more in the latest technology to help us identify and fix leaks even faster – this includes expanding our ‘smart network’ where sensors in the pipes can tell our technicians when a leak has started, as many are not visible
- exploring opportunities to offer engineer appointments on Saturday mornings in response to customer demand
- continue to find ways to reduce the number of steps and time taken to fit a water meter at a property, as customers have told us we are making it too complicated
- further improving the quality of our water by starting the next phase of work on a £55m major upgrade of our two main water treatment plants, which serve around 6 in 10 of our customers in our region (these are located at our Hampton Loade and Seedy Mill sites).
Trust and value for money
In our latest business plan for the five years from 2020 to 2025, we have made promises in two areas that our customers have told us it’s important to deliver on. Many customers told us that as they can’t switch their water supplier, we needed to make sure that we offer them water bills that are value for money. They also need to have a high level of trust in us to deliver the best possible service and do the right things for them and their communities.
From April 2020, we now have set targets to hit for both of these promises. These targets are agreed by our regulator Ofwat and our performance against them is measured each year through independent customer surveys. Half of the results come from an independent survey that we carry out with around 570 customers each year; the other half are taken from a survey of 150 customers run by the Consumer Council for Water, which is the voice for water consumers.
You can see below that we are continuing to fall short of our target for value for money, partly due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the more recent cost of living crisis, but also because our customers are telling us that the improvements in our service have not kept pace with their expectations.
Over the last two years, we have fallen short of our Trust target, which is partly due to the fact that our customers are expecting a greater level of transparency regarding our performance. One of the reasons for this is an increasing lack of trust that people have in companies taking the right actions for customers, communities and the local environment.
| Customer promises |
2020/21 annual score |
2021/22 annual score |
2022/23 annual score |
Our target for 2022/23 |
| Proportion of customers who agree or strongly agree that their clean water bills are value for money |
75% |
70% |
75% |
81% |
| Average score out of 10 of how much customers trust us |
8.22 |
7.76 |
7.76 |
8.20 |
South Staffs Water surveys
2022/23: 569 domestic customers
2021/22: 569 domestic customers
2020/21: 562 household customers; 2019/20: 560 household customers.
Telephone and online interviews conducted by independent agency Turquoise Thinking, between June and March each year.
CCW surveys
2022/23: 150 domestic customers interviewed by DJS Research on behalf of CCW
2021/22: 150 domestic customers interviewed by telephone by DJS Research on behalf of CCW
2020/21: 150 domestic customers interviewed by telephone by DJS Research on behalf of CCW.
Every year, a representative sample of customers by age, gender and social status is surveyed.
What’s happening next?
Our current business plan is focused on building trust and on making sure our customers think the bills they pay are good value for money. To help achieve this, we are investing more than ever to improve the quality of water, reduce the number of burst mains, reduce leakage from our network of pipes and make sure the experience is good every time a customer needs to contact us. On top of that, by putting in place new ways of working and using new technologies, we can be more efficient and look at ways to improve the resilience of our systems and assets. You can take a look at how we are doing in many of these areas, by taking a look at the other sections of our performance dashboard, which is updated monthly.
We also recognise that some customers who struggle to afford their water bills may need some form of additional help or support – particularly with the impacts of the COVID-19 and now the cost-of-living crisis. We provide a range of schemes to help these customers, tailored to their individual needs. These have continued to grow – with over 42,700 customers receiving support through our Assure discounted tariff during 2022/23. We are continuing to look at other ways to help our customers with their bills.
Read more about our plans for the next 5 years.
