How we support our customers – National Customer Service Week
Posted: 09 October 2024
For over 170 years we have provided an essential service to customers across South Staffs. We’re committed to providing clean, high-quality drinking water through reliable supplies and customer service to match.
This week is National Customer Service Week, an opportunity for us to highlight those across our organisation who interact with our customers regularly and look at what we’re doing to improve our services.
Across our business, we have a range of teams who interact with customers from our Customer Liaison Officers and Leakage Technicians who work out in the field responding to issues, to our call agents who are on hand to deal with any queries our customers may have.
This, members of our customer-facing teams have come together for an internal workshop looking at how we can improve customer service by sharing experiences and ideas to help find solutions to issues that cause concerns for our customers.
“Customer service is at the very heart of our business, and we are committed to finding ways of delivering better services to our customers.
“There has been a lot of attention in the media on the service that water companies deliver, and we are aware that we need to work hard to rebuild some trust. By bringing our customer-facing teams together we will continue to place emphasis on the improvements we need to make for our customers.”
Gary Kinsella, Interim Customer Delivery Director at South Staffs Water
Looking after our networkOut and about, you can spot our field teams travelling across the region responding to visible network leaks, water supply interruptions and water quality inquiries.
To ensure our customers receive a reliable and high-quality supply, our teams work hard to minimise issues on our network and over the last year we have reduced our response time to leaks as well as the average time of disruption.
So that we can maintain the long-term serviceability of our network, we will be investing in renewing mains across the region. We will also be continuing our work to proactively replace lead pipework as part of our mains’ rehabilitation programme and in response to elevated levels at customers’ properties.
Affordability supportA common area of concern within utilities is affordability. Whilst our bills are amongst the lowest in England and Wales, for some customers, paying their water bill can be difficult.
In the last financial year, we have supported 62,000 customers with their water bills through our financial assistance schemes including our Assure social tariff, payment plans, and charitable trust grants.
On top of this, we are providing additional support to 12% of our customers who are more vulnerable due to medical, learning, physical disabilities or financial difficulties, and who are on the Priority Services Register.
To further our financial support, we will be trialling a new social tariff with a small group of customers, which will be based on essential water use and encouraging easy water-saving around the home.
Helping communitiesBeing visible and accessible in our communities is very important to us and we have a dedicated Community Engagement Team that pop up around our regions to support those who are traditionally harder to reach to ensure they are getting the support they need.
The team engage with local groups and businesses to set up mobile support in communal areas and here in South Staffs, we have a dedicated community hub in Wednesbury.
We will continue to enhance our community support over the next five years whilst also supporting the next generation of water customers through a dedicated education programme, developing the partnerships we have with local schools.