Helping a large water company enhance experience

Our partnership with Severn Trent has given their customers a better experience and aided with debt collection.

We have been partners with water provider Severn Trent since 2012, developing a strong relationship across more than ten years. As well as a base in the UK, currently there are nearly 300 Capita employees working from our site in Pune, India.

Severn Trent turned to us to help improve the quality of experience its customers were receiving by improving its customer satisfaction (CSAT) score. As well as this, the utilities company brought us in to aid with its debt recovery and collection strategy. 

Streamlining services using webchat

In July 2021, Severn Trent decided to run a trial with both the UK and India Capita teams to improve the CSAT scores of their webchat channel, with the goal of giving customers a better, more frictionless experience. 

The company was facing staffing issues in its front office. Webchat team members were being put on calls to cover the shortfall, which was resulting in a high number of chats waiting in the queue and increased customer frustration. So a team of 13 individuals was set up onto the project in less than a week, a mix of new recruits and those experienced with webchat technology. 

CSAT scores are measured based on set of questions which are sent to customers at the end of each chat on WhatsApp. Prior to Capita’s intervention, Seven Trent had a customer satisfaction score of 8.9. The CSAT target for our India team on the project was 9.2 or above; as part of the trial, the team consistently delivered a score of 9.5 plus that peaked at 9.8 within the first two weeks of going live. This was the first time such a high score had ever been achieved by the team. Capita India also covers a wider working window (15 hours) along with weekend working, which helped reduce overall wait times for the customers.   

From the word go, weekly and monthly customer satisfaction targets were met. As well as the CSAT, another metric was a quality target, set between 60-70%. This was measured by chats chosen at random being quality checked based on pre-agreed parameters on quality forms, agreed between the UK and India teams, mostly based on achieving the right resolution and the agent’s empathy and understanding, along with the overall service that the customer received. The first two weeks of the trial delivered an average quality score of 81%.

Meeting debt collection goals

As part of the same contract awarded to Capita, Severn Trent needed to collect over £10m more from customers every year over five years in order to hit its debt collection targets. One reason for this issue was that many properties over the last few years had not been billed or the wrong customer had been charged, often a result of individuals moving home without informing the water supplier; that or as a result of the properties being declared ‘vacant’ or ‘void’ while there were in fact people still living there.

As part of a debt recovery strategy, we supported with additional work worth 7,600 business hours. A major part of this entailed searching Severn Trent’s database to find the possible current address for the absent customers, then moving in to collect the outstanding amount. This helped the utilities provider to generate an additional £6 million in revenue and meet a target of solving 24,000 cases before the end of March 2022.

With the right strategy now in place, Capita accomplished all this over only 35 days, and the work included resolving 17,000 of the void properties (those that were labelled as vacant in the records).

A successful relationship that keeps going

Severn Trent expressed its satisfaction in 2021 when the provider awarded Capita a score of 95% in an overall client satisfaction survey. The successful partnership between Capita and Seven Trent has continued throughout the years, with a contract extension awarded in 2020.  

Extending the contract demonstrates how satisfied the client has been, showing its level of trust in Capita. The efficiency delivered, the expertise provided, impeccable implementation of the contract – all have served to build a strong relationship that meets expectations and exceeds them. We’re looking forward to many more years of this successful partnership.