Thames Water has gone out to tender with a contract to outsource its customer services in a bid to to gain a place in the upper quartile of regulator Ofwat’s annual Customer Satisfaction table.

The SIM rankings customer satisfaction table published by industry regulator Ofwat are now in their third year. In this year’s results published in August, Thames Water once again came last despite boosting its score from 62.9 to 71. South Staffordshire was the top-performing company for the second year running, achieving the highest SIM score of 89 out of 100.

Ofwat used the companies’ SIM score during the three years 2011-12 to 2013-14 to decide whether they should receive a reward or penalty in the range of +0.5% to -1.0% of a company’s regulated turnover. Both the Draft and Final Determinations for Thames Water included a SIM penalty of 0.9%.

Contract to run for up to seven years worth up to £7 million

The water company is now looking to appoint a maximum of two suppliers to the Customer Services Business Process Outsource (BPO) contract which will run for up to seven years and could be worth up to £7 million.

Each year Thames currently issues in excess of 7,000,000 items of correspondence, including bills, and receive in excess of 4,000,000 contacts from customers via phone, letter, e-mail and the web. These include technical supply-related queries, customer and account queries (e.g. billing, change of address) and contact relating to payment and debt.

In the Household market the water company  bills and serves 13.5 m customers for both water and waste services, and provides waste services only to a further 1.7 m customers who receive their bills via one of four regionally based water only companies.

In the Non-Household (business customers) sector, it bills and serves 265,000 customers for both water and waste services, and provides waste services only to a further 35,000 customers who receive their bills via one of four water only companies.

Thames: "passionate about becoming a truly customer centric organisation"

Thames says in its tender:

“We are passionate about becoming a truly customer centric organisation. As such, we are looking for a BPO partner(s) who shares our vision for customer excellence, and can work with us to integrate and enhance capability across the partnership in order to place Thames Water in the upper quartile of the industry's Customer Satisfaction table.”

 The successful BPO partner(s) will work with Thames to transform the business using innovation to help deliver overall retail strategy, including;

• Remove drivers of dissatisfaction by creating a more resilient service platform.
• Improve the customer experience through proactive customer management.
• Build brand perceptions to help improve Thames Water's position in the markets it operates, and in the hearts and minds of its people.
• Deepen the customer relationships to meet customer segment needs.
• Develop and extend the retail model to be ready for market deregulation.

Thames currently has a number of customer service contracts in place, both onshore and offshore, that are delivered to residential and business customers by existing partners on a day-to-day basis.

The tender states:

“The successful supply partner(s) will be accountable for delivering these services seamlessly across a front, mid and back office environment. They will be enabled to resolve customer queries directly through multiple channels and help to minimise the number of complaints we receive.”

Throughout the life of the partnership Thames Water will remain accountable for strategy, policy and key customer ‘touch points’.

The scope of services currently provided by Thames’ BPO partners includes:

• Inbound and out-bound phone calls;
• Customer Account Management (including taking customer payments, maintaining customer account details and receiving meter reads from customers);
• New Connections and Disconnections (including setting up new properties, locating missing properties and managing change of properties);
• Home Move (managing the process of customers moving in, within and out of the Thames region);
• Credit and Collections (proactive customer contact for customers who won't pay, can't pay or are struggling to pay);
• Dealing with customer exceptions (such as meter reads, billing and home-move);
• Enabling Channel integration, including Webchat and Social Media services;
• Managing customer correspondence such as letters, e-mails, text and standard set forms, together with back-office support services;
• Enabling services such as reporting, analytics and MI, as well as agent performance management and resource forecasting.

Partners must “live and breathe” Thames’ vision and values

Thames said it is looking for a BPO partners(s) who will embrace its visions and values ethos; ‘Here for You: Innovating for Life in a Changing Environment’ and that  it expects partners “ to live and breathe these values in everything they do.”

Deadline for expressions of interest in the contract, which consists of three separate lots, is 16^th January 2015. Any agreement awarded would be for an initial duration of 5 years, with options to extend annually up to a maximum overall term of 7 years.

Click here to access the tender documentation.