Southern Water uses Capita's AI tool to flush customer complaints

Hang on, wasn't Capita already handling things like billing, etc? Ah, AgentSuite comes to the rescue

Scandal struck UK utility company Southern Water is extending a long-running managed services contract with Capita, everyone's favorite outsourcing badass, for up to five years at an estimated cost of £92.4 million ($121 million).

The renewal kicks off in from July next year and comprises £56.3 million ($74 million) for an initial three years of the agreement and then £36.1 million ($47 million) for an optional two more years. The contract was already extended in 2019.

The Contact Centre subdivision within Capita Experience will run a set of services including front-office customer contact (voice, chat email, social media and complaint handling), as well as back-office transaction processing, and early collections.

Lucky Southern Water customers' bill printing, mail and inbound correspondence processing will also be handled by Capita, and the London-listed IT services biz will deliver this from "multiple Capita locations."

In a report to the stock market yesterday, Capita said the services are built on "innovative technology and AI that includes AWS Connect telephony services and Live Person chat (including asynchronous messaging through WhatsApp)."

It further claimed that in 2024 it handled one million customer contacts and processed 1.3 million back-office transactions.

Southern Water was previously listed as one of the most complained-about water companies in the UK. This related to billing, water and wastewater services. The Consumer Council for Water (CCW) claimed in 2023 that its customers were "being let down by a failure to understand and deal with the causes of high levels of complaints from their customers."

"Billing and charges (47 percent), water services (30 percent), and wastewater services (22 percent) were the main causes of complaint," a CCW spokesperson said at the time.

Regarding the latest renewal with Capita, the tech corp reminded investors that Southern Water was the first customer to deploy its GenAI "customer experience solution," AgentSuite, designed to improve customer service by "streamlining and personalizing agent-customer interactions." Capita didn't specify when this was implemented, though the tool was unveiled in July last year.

"This implementation has materially reduced average call handling times, and we expect further reductions with the impending go-live of automated customer data protection verification."

Corinne Ripoche, CEO, Capita Experience said:

"We are delighted to continue our partnership with Southern Water, providing essential services and keeping them at the forefront of AI-enabled customer experience in the utilities industry.

"The introduction of AgentSuite has been an incredibly positive experience for all involved, and we are excited to have the opportunity to continue to deliver even better AI-powered outcomes for the Southern Water team and their customers."

The Register's editorial team is excited to see how this translates come the next report about customer complaints.

Southern Water also hit the headlines when it was fined a record £90 million ($118 million) in 2021 by the Environment Agency for dumping sewage into rivers and coastal waters in Kent, Hampshire and Sussex from 2010-2015.

As we revealed in the same year, Southern Water intended to install tens of thousands of sewer monitors and associated analytics systems to prevent blockages. A spokesman told us the tech installation was in no way connected to the fine it had received.

"Network digitization is central to our commitment to reduce the risk of blocked sewers and the pollution incidents they can cause.

"Sewer pipes connecting homes and street to the much larger sewer mains are easy to block with wet wipes, fat oil and grease and other so-called unflushables and this is a leading cause of incidents."

Southern Water generated £859.4 million ($1.1 billion) in revenue in fiscal 2024, up from £792.5 million ($1 billion) a year earlier, and recorded an operating loss before tax of £72.8 million ($96 million), worse than then £18.4 million ($24 million) loss in fiscal 2023. ®