Portsmouth and Wessex lead on customer experience as financial incentives bite

Portsmouth Water followed closely by Wessex Water ranked top in Ofwat’s domestic customer experience league table for 2020-21 – the first year that companies will receive financial payments for out and under performance. Meanwhile, Thames came bottom, with a £16.7m penalty.

Table 1 shows the C-MeX ranking and incentive payments by company. 2019-20 was a shadow year where financial incentives were not applied. Ofwat has not made direct comparisons to the shadow year, due to some methodological differences. However it said the 2020-21 data will now be treated as a benchmark against which to compare forward performance.

TABLE 1

Meanwhile Severn Trent came top of the table on developer experience (D-MeX), with Wessex in second place and Portsmouth third. SES Water was bottom, with Yorkshire Water just above (see table 2).

TABLE 2

Accent conducted the research for Ofwat. C-MeX is based on two surveys conducted each month with residential customers:

the customer service survey (CSS) – based on interviews with a random sample of customers that have recently contacted their company, using a mixture of telephone and online surveys; and

the customer experience survey (CES) – based on interviews with a random sample of members of the public, using a mixture of telephone and face-to-face surveys. 80% of each company’s C-MeX score is based on the customer satisfaction score and a further 20% on the net promoter score where customers are asked how likely they are to recommend their water company.

D-MeX has two components which measure the service provided by water companies to their developer services customers (which include large and small property developers, self-lay providers, new appointees and other customers requesting a new connection). Those components are:

a qualitative component – based on monthly interviews with developer services customers that have transacted with a water company in the previous month; and

a quantitative component – based on the water company’s performance against a key set of Water UK metrics which measure the service provided by water companies to their developer services customers.

These outperformance and underperformance payments will be confirmed at final determination stage of the in period process. Ofwat has just issued its draft determinations for 2020-21 performance. Go to Firms secure in-period incentives ranging from +£25m to -£53m in 2020-21