Customer care

Customers can use a variety of contact channels to communicate with us, and we aim to provide a high-quality customer experience for each of these channels.

Our core customer information covers essential aspects of our services and provides clear information and guidance for our customers. We regularly review and update this information, incorporating feedback from our customers and CCW. We also ensure any updates align with Ofwat's core customer information guidelines.

We support customers during incidents, such as water supply interruptions, by keeping them informed, providing bottled water when necessary, and offering compensation. We are committed to enhancing our incident support for customers in line with Ofwat’s expectations for improving customer service and support during incidents.

We support customers who have experienced sewer flooding by responding quickly and providing a free clean-up service. We go the extra mile to get the customer’s property back to normal and aim to leave them in a cost neutral position through a combination of compensation and insurance.

Our free leak repair service supports customers with leaks on their private supply pipes. We also provide a leakage allowance if the leak has impacted their bill.

Our promise offers customers one of the best overall guarantees in the industry. It outlines the length of time we’ll take to respond to contacts and incidents, and how much we’ll pay if we fail to meet these promises.

We have a simple three-stage complaints procedure for when customers think our service has fallen short. If we are at fault, we do our best to put things right.

CCW recognised us as the top-performing water and sewerage company in their household complaint handling report 2024/25. The report says we have been among the best-performing companies for many years.

We remain committed to monitoring and delivering our complaints action plan, which includes several initiatives aimed at improving response times, complaint handling, resolution and compensation.

We regularly share best practice and work collaboratively with other companies, for example, hosting or attending best practice visits with companies from within or outside the water sector.

We are also members of national forums such as:

• The Essential Services Access Network (ESAN)
• Rural Services Partnership
• Rural England
• Disability Rights UK
• The Institute of Customer Service
• The Collaboration Network.

Through these forums, we hear about best practice, support national work on vulnerability and champion the needs of water customers who need extra help.

We use customer insight to drive continuous improvement and help plan future investment.

Proactively listening to feedback from our customers and learning from their positive and negative experiences is critical to driving continuous improvement in the services we provide.

By segmenting customers, we can compare the feedback from one group with another.

We display and share data from our internal feedback and C-MeX surveys through data dashboards (real time where we can) to identify key themes, pain points and improvements we can make to training, processes, policies, and our systems.

We undertake detailed customer journey mapping, adopting different customer personas including those on Priority Services and affordability schemes to identify areas where we can make it easier and quicker to resolve contacts and improve experience overall. We will continue to improve customer experience using insight from Ofwat's research on customer experiences. We will also continue to evolve the way we gather and analyse customer feedback, making use of new technologies such as AI and other voice analytics tools.

All of this insight and continuous improvement is overseen by our senior Customer Experience Group (CEG) and Vulnerability Advisory Panel (VAP).

Our commitment

Since 2018, our vulnerability strategy, Every Customer Matters, has continuously evolved to meet the changing needs and expectations of our customers.

This strategy highlights our dedication to supporting those who require extra assistance, detailing our achievements to date and our future plans to expand support.

Flexible and tailored services

We offer a range of flexible, tailored services designed to meet the diverse needs of our customers through our Priority Services and Tailored Assistance Programme (TAP).

These services ensure that we can provide the necessary support now and in the future.

Adhering to Ofwat's guidelines

Ofwat's Service for all vulnerability guidance, Priority Services Register standards and Paying Fair Guidelines set objectives and minimum expectations for how we treat customers who need extra help or are struggling to pay.

Our vulnerability strategy outlines our plans to meet these expectations. Ofwat has thoroughly assessed water companies' vulnerability strategies, providing high-level feedback on each area of service.

We are proud to be recognised as exemplary in four out of the five assessed areas. Additionally, we are recognised as 99% compliant with the Paying Fair Guidelines.