Water companies to pay for low customer satisfaction rankings

Thames Water and Southern Water has ranked at the bottom of the customer satisfaction and experience annual Ofwat rankings and as a result, will have to make underperformance payments.

That follows the water services regulation authority’s publication of the results of customer satisfaction and experience for water and wastewater companies in England and Wales over the last year.

According to these rankings, Thames Water has to return £16.6 million and Southern Water £4.9 million to its customers for poor customer satisfaction.

Surveys found Portsmouth Water, Wessex Water, Northumbrian Water and Dŵr Cymru as top performers when it comes to customer satisfaction.

The mechanism named C-MeX measures the quality of services delivered to household customers and is designed to incentivise the 17 largest water companies to provide excellent levels of service to their customers.

David Black, Ofwat Interim Chief Executive, said: “We recognise companies have had to overcome challenges over the last year and we are pleased to see some improvements in customer service levels.

“Customers expect their water provider to deliver good customer service and those who fail to meet those expectations need to raise their performance.

“We want companies to continually strive to improve the quality of their customer experience – those companies who are leading the sector have been rightly rewarded.”