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Castle Water has won the Customer Service Excellence Award at the Perthshire Chamber of Commerce Business Star Awards. Held at Crieff Hydro Hotel on Friday 19th November, the awards recognised the excellent work and achievements of businesses in Perthshire.
As the UK’s leading independent business water retailer, servicing more than 350,000 business customers, Castle Water takes a long-term view of customer relationships and do as much as possible to help its customers, saving UK businesses up to 20% on their business water when they switch to Castle Water.
In April this year, Castle Water received its 10,000th customer review on Trustpilot, a significant milestone for the company. With over 12,000 customer reviews, Castle Water remains the most reviewed water retailer on Trustpilot, with more 5-star reviews than all other water retailers combined.
Saving customers over £6 million during lockdown
In a recent news post, Castle Water’s CEO, John Reynolds, said it had been a busy year for the company.
In the face of the pandemic, the water supplier stopped charging many of its business water customers for the lockdown, saving its customers over £6 million. This meant producing twice the number of invoices and reports than normal, due to customers being forced to close and re-open their business premises in accordance with lockdowns.
John said, “We found a way to reduce customers’ fixed charges at the start of the lockdown, which made life easier for them. It’s been intense and hardworking, but not problematic. A lot of customers have said we’re the only utility supplier that’s actually been helping them.”
Customer service without compromise
Castle Water’s phone lines remained open despite the pandemic, and it quickly deployed more people to handle customer webchats; preferred by many customers as they adopted ‘working from home’.
Castle Water’s Head of Customer Service, Mary Haviland said, “Between April 2020 and May 2021, over 21,000 customers said they were happy with Castle Water’s webchat service. 74% of all those who reviewed used webchat when volumes of contact were up to 80% above average levels.”
Making account management easier for customers
In its latest Customer Service Update, Castle Water confirmed it will continue to invest in its customer portal, with a major platform update planned for release by the end of 2021. The customer portal currently provides many ways for Castle Water customers to manage their account online, including downloading invoices, viewing your account balance, submitting meter readings, finding your water meter, and viewing account transactions.
Also in the update, Castle Water confirmed it’s on track to install 5,000 Automatic Meter Reading devices, free of charge to eligible customers by 2022. The project will save Castle Water customers over £2.67 million in installation costs, and up to £9 million per year in potential leakage costs. Castle Water continues to invest in its free online customer resources that provide practical ways its customers can save water, cut costs, and get the most from their Castle Water account.
Tribute to the team at Castle Water
Castle Water remains in a very strong position and continues to see significant growth. Despite a drop in revenue, the company has seen a rise in profit before tax to £3.9m, up from a loss of £14.4m in 2020.
In his recent news post, John credits the results to the dedicated team at Castle Water saying, “It’s been intense hard work for everybody, but it’s been commercially successful. Most water suppliers lose money, but we’ve made a modest profit over the past year. We’re in a very strong position and I think we stand out in a sector where a lot of companies have performed very badly. That’s a tribute to all the staff at Castle Water.”
