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We aimed to reduce abandoned phone calls to no more than 5.78 per cent and actually achieved 5.22 per cent.

Only 0.5 per cent of customers calling our Contact Centre received an engaged tone.

We reduced our telephone contact with customers by six per cent by making sure we resolved their query during the first call.

We reviewed more than 1,500 paragraphs used in our letters to customers to ensure the information is clear and precise.

The number of forms we received from customers online rose by four per cent.

Customer Services staff

How we performed

Our performance for customers continued to improve and we were awarded a quality mark for our customer service operations. We achieved ISO 9001 Quality Management accreditation after six days of auditing by the British Standards Institution.

The standard recognises our continuous improvement and robust processes, including a reduction of customer complaints by 39 per cent and a rise in the number of customer billing enquiries responded to within five working days to 99.94 per cent.

The Consumer Council for Water heralded our response to written complaints as a case of best practice, assessing it as ‘good’ with a mark of 22 out of 25.

With help from the Plain English Campaign, we updated our welcome letter and account statements to make them clearer and more concise and held a customer forum to gain feedback.

We launched an initiative in our Technical Call Centre to proactively contact customers affected by water leaks, blocked sewers and flooding to check on the quality of service they received and to ensure they had the most accurate and up-to-date information.