Customer experience director Kelly Macfarlane leaves Thames

Customer experience director Kelly Macfarlane has parted company with Thames Water.

Thames said Macfarlane “has decided to leave the business after four years to engage in new opportunities and we are now starting the process to appoint a successor”.

In the interim, customer experience finance director, Din Manuelpillai, will take on the role.

There was no comment as to whether the departure was initiated by Macfarlane, who has been an important part of the senior leadership team at Thames since 2017 and responsible for all customer interfaces and teams including residential metering, billing and service support, and non household and developer services operations.

The exit could provide opportunity for new chief executive and customer specialist, Sarah Bentley, to reconsider customer responsibilities at Thames, which has consistently been the poorest performer in water sector customer experience measure the Service Incentive Mechanism since 2016/17.

During her time at Severn Trent, Bentley was chief customer officer responsible for customer retail and network operations, group technology and transformation, and among her achievements, led the transformation of Severn Trent’s digital customer experience.