Written Complaint Assessments Overview 2016/17

One of our main areas of work is to ensure water companies sort out customer problems quickly and without hassle. We do this by working with poor performing companies to identify and deal with root causes of complaints, identifying good  practice and sharing it across the industry. Written complaint assessments are an important part of this work. We review the
performance of companies in our annual complaints to the industry report. We determine and assess those we define as ‘at risk’ because of poor complaint handling. An Assessment Panel visits “at risk” companies to carry out assessments of their complaint handling from a sample of cases. We consider:

• whether the company has adhered to its complaint procedure;
• how well the company has dealt with the complaint and whether it has addressed the customer’s concerns and signposted to the next stage;
• if the company has dealt with the complaint within its own or regulatory timescale.
  This report covers the outcomes of the written complaint assessments carried out in 2016/17