“We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’re on the right track”

Katy Taylor, Southern Water's Chief Customer Officer, responds in words and on video to the Consumer Council for Water's annual complaints report.

The priority for me and my colleagues at Southern Water is providing the best service for our customers, all 4.7 million of them. And most of our people are customers too, who swim in the sea, walk through our parks and live in our communities. But I know our performance hasn’t been good enough in the past and we haven’t met customers' expectations. We all want to improve, and we are tackling the problem. 

Today, the Consumer Council for Water (CCW) released its annual complaints report, which reveals that our performance has fallen short of the standards expected by both our customers, our regulators and us. We know we need to do better, and we are sorry our customers haven’t had the service they deserve in the past.  

We are prioritising better customer service as a cornerstone of our Turnaround Plan, underpinned by a £1.6 billion investment from our shareholders, to accelerate improvement.  

Some areas we’re targeting include: 

• Investing in our environmental performance, reducing storm overflows and pollutions, as we know this is a focus area for our customers. 
• Streamlining our complaints process, offering a new video assistant for customers who have issues with their water or wastewater services, and upskilling our employees with enhanced customer service training.  
• Improving communications to keep our customers regularly informed during water outages and flooding incidents, as well as updates to our services. 
• Engaging with our communities through improved communications, education programmes and regular forums.

We are already starting to see the green shoots of improvement, but we have a long way to go.