Risk Based Written Complaint Assessments Overview 2014-15
Under our ‘Right first time’ objective, we work closely with the companies to ensure their service meets and exceeds customer expectations and they sort out problems quickly and without hassle. It is important that companies ensure complaints against them are minimised and dealt with effectively, avoiding the necessity of customers having to write to them again. As the consumer body, our work in this area includes:
- dealing with customer complaints against their water company;
- monitoring and reporting company performance through the number of complaints they receive;
- identifying emerging complaint trends and pressing the poor performing companies to improve; and
- sharing good practice to help bring the poor performers into line with the rest of the industry.
Written complaint assessments support this work. They provide our Local Consumer Advocates (LCAs) and staff with an opportunity to visit companies and review a sample of 25 written complaints. CCW assessment panels score the complaints on how well the company has adhered to its complaint procedure, adhered to its timescales in responding, and whether it has covered all of the points the customer has raised. We also discuss wider complaint issues with companies, make general recommendations and share good practice from other assessments and more general company policies.
Compliant information is a key measure of company performance. CCW’s recommendations and sharing of good practice from the written complaints assessments has been one of the factors that has helped deliver the following industry improvements since the assessments began in 2008:
- written complaints against water companies in England and Wales have reduced by 61% since their peak in 2007/08;
- the number of times customers have had to write to their companies again over the same issue has reduced by over 70%;
- CCW complaint investigations against companies have reduced by
over 98%; and - the difference between the worst performer and the industry average for complaints per 10,000 connections has reduced by 57%.