South Staffs Water leads Ofwat league table for Customer Satisfaction from water companies with help from Echo

South Staffs Water, a major Echo Managed Services customer, has again topped the customer satisfaction league table for water companies recently published by Ofwat - the water industry regulator. Echo provides outsourced multi-channel customer contact services for South Staffs Water – handling some 3.2 million transactions per annum from a specialist contact centre in Walsall.

Ofwat uses its annual Service Incentive Mechanism (SIM) survey to measure and track the quality of service delivery of all 18 water companies in the UK, based on every aspect of a customer’s direct experiences with them. This is the second year running that South Staffs Water’s customer services operation – delivered in partnership with Echo – has been the top performing WOC in the national results table. When averaged out, this latest score places the water company at the head of the league table over the three years since the SIM was introduced in 2011.

“We work closely with Echo to ensure we deliver a positive, high quality customer experience for all our South Staffs Water customers – whether they want to use one of our self-service channels or prefer to speak to one of Echo’s skilled agents to pay a bill, provide a meter reading or answer any other query,” comments Rachel Barber, Customer Service Director at South Staffs Water. “This latest recognition of our efforts by Ofwat, which uses industry data to compare us directly with our peers, is a fantastic achievement for the staff at South Staffs Water and Echo. Our aim is to build on this, continually improving our service offering to deliver an even stronger performance next year.”

Nigel Baker, Managing Director of Echo Managed Services, added: “We’re proud that our dedicated, 100-strong team of specialist Echo agents has helped South Staffs Water to secure the number one spot for customer satisfaction for the second year running. We work in partnership to handle customer enquiries from some 1.25 million customers, so it’s great for South Staffs Water to be acknowledged for its high service levels and customer satisfaction in particular. Analysing the data in more detail, it was particularly satisfying to note that South Staffs Water also comes out top in securing ‘First Call Resolutions’, showing how effective Echo’s agents are in addressing customer concerns first time – and helping South Staffs Water to avoid the need for unnecessary repeat interactions.”

Echo has worked with South Staffs Water since 2001, evolving customer service to meet and exceed customer expectations. Annually, Echo’s team of agents now handles significant interaction volumes for South Staffs Water, including:

• Over 500,000 billing contacts
• 112,000 metered accounts billed
• 3.2 million transactions per annum
• Billing over £60m per annum and collecting in excess of 98% of billed debits raised.