In her role at Affinity Water, the UK’s largest water-only supplier serving almost four million people across the Southeast of England, Rebecca Froud is responsible for the customer-facing teams delivering excellence whilst optimising operations against a backdrop of heightened environmental and sustainability imperatives. Rebecca joined Affinity in the summer of 2023  following two decades in financial services in roles that included Chief Operating Officer at C. Hoare & Co, Chief Operating Officer for the Global Private Banking & Wealth Operations business at HSBC, Director of Banking Operations at Metro Bank, and Managing Director of Client Banking Operations at Coutts Bank.

Paul Riseborough: Rebecca, welcome. You’ve come to the water industry after many years in financial services driving innovation and excellence in the customer experience space. Tell me a little about what motivates you to gravitate towards those roles. 

Rebecca Froud: My drive has been for continual improvements in how delivery of service is provided, and that this matches customer expectation and the outcomes customers want. This involves implementing different strategies and approaches, but with customer choice at the heart of the journeys. It comes down to treating our customers fairly, with transparency and providing them with the right outcomes. It’s an evolution that is really starting to accelerate in the water industry.

There is potential to translate some of the best practices seen in other industries to the water sector. For example, telecoms in the UK  has its infrastructure that sits centrally within Openreach, but customers can then choose with whom they contract to buy services such as BT, Sky, Vodaphone and so on. This provides strong competition, which is healthy and drives how companies innovate to ensure they are the company of choice to the customer.  

Paul Riseborough: How are you thinking about digitisation and using technology to make that customer experience better? Investing in mobile, in better data, in customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, in workflows to knit this customer experience together…  Also, what channels do you or could you offer? Where does the industry want to get to?

Rebecca Froud: Digitisation and how customers are provided choice in the channel they use, for example, can be transformational – to have access to multiple channels and allow customers to do business in a way they choose, how, when and where it is convenient to them. Limiting these channels will ‘push’ customers to interact with a company in a restricted way and this does not factor in customer preference.  

In terms of channel offerings, there are two key drivers. The first, as mentioned, is making sure it matches how customers want to engage and do business, and probably driven by how they operate their lives across a range of topics. The second is the way in which this translates into customers having control and companies being able to leverage technology. Whether that's digitisation, automation, artificial intelligence, or an alternate, each has a place.

Having the choice is key and is rooted in personal preference. You can't force a customer to use a specific channel, but providing them the options and showing them the benefit  – via linking to their specific needs – can help them actively opt in to this delivery model. You can influence to some degree, but certainly most companies hold customers who represent a very wide demographic spectrum – urban, rural, older, younger, and ethnically diverse – so the way companies match channel and service offering to specific needs can help differentiation. 

Paul Riseborough: And of course vulnerability is in the mix as well – customers who are struggling to meet their bills or facing other challenges in accessing your services. You've got a hugely diverse customer base and while their product needs might not be that complex, there will nonetheless be a need to adjust your service offering to better support them, and all this in a relatively price constrained market. Banks, as a point of comparison, have come a long way in supporting vulnerable customers. How does the water industry address that, and what needs to change? 

Rebecca Froud: Interestingly, this is where the water industry is further ahead of financial services. The water companies work in strong partnership with many governmental departments, including Health & Social Care (DHSC) and Work & Pensions (DWP), as well as local authorities who are best placed to align information on various customers whom the water company service in order that it feels joined up.

Everyone cares passionately about our customers at Affinity. The culture is amazing. This care and attention extends to when something goes wrong – very strong collaboration and momentum to solve problems, everybody helping customers when needed and right the way through to resolution. 

Paul Riseborough: If you were to assess where the industry will be in 10 years, the potential pace of change, will it fundamentally be the same with just a few more digital bells and whistles, or do you think a more profound customer transformation will have happened? As a customer, how might I be empowered by digital technologies? Will I be able to self-serve as a customer? Will I have more visibility into my account and my usage, and how I might optimize that usage? 

Rebecca Froud: I have really high confidence that it will look massively different. At Affinity, we are committed to ensuring we serve customers in a thoughtful and effective way, and to do this we need to adapt and transform our current ways of working and provide new consistent channel options to our customers to use. 

Paul Riseborough: You have seen firsthand many operational improvement programs and customer experience transformations during your time in financial services. Drawing on all that experience, what would you prioritise to make the difference to customer experience transformation in the water industry?

Rebecca Froud: View and treat people as individuals, give people choice, and help them see where the value lies and make things simple. Banking can be more complex due to multiple products and regulations, but the way any service model is delivered should be simple. In water, new technologies – such as linking water usage to a smart meter so customers can understand and visibly see usage and then link this with adapted tariff choices – can support making it tangible and give customers a sense of control. 

Paul Riseborough: So number one it is about empowering the customer so that they can get what they need from the service. But the second thing you're talking about is design led thinking… what other potential innovations can you foresee?

Rebecca Froud: Affinity Water is the first water company to trial a tariff change. In the pilot the water usage steps through various usage tariffs – the more water used, the more it will cost. So the customer becomes aware and in control, and can see what they are using in order for them, if they wish, to adjust usage in response to the costs in real time.

Paul Riseborough: There's a big thing about control. While the product may be quite simple, there is still quite a dialogue or information exchange required when it comes helping customers use water more smartly.

Rebecca Froud: We have started on this journey with our ‘Save our Streams’ (SOS) campaign, which is part of our sustainability initiative to deliver a 12.5% reduction in per capita consumption by 2025. We're looking to educate customers about why we all need to use less. We are a water scarce country, and we see even more pressure on water resources in the Southeast of England. I'm chair of the Water Neutrality Board, and we're working with a diverse range of members such as developers of housing developments who are helping us trial how we harvest rainwater, so the only water provision to the house would be for drinking water. 

Paul Riseborough: In closing, what do you see as most important as you lead teams through customer transformations?

Rebecca Froud: I am an advocate of putting yourself in the customer's shoes, so whether you are answering a call and sending someone out to help fix a leak, answering a complaint, dealing with a bill enquiry, we all need to consider how we can help the customers get the outcome they are looking for. 

There are three key elements of this. One is colleagues having a strong commitment to being customer-centric and holding a strong purpose. The second is our customer journeys are built end to end and where possible provide consistency through any channel chosen, including digitisation. And the third is ensuring we hold a strong and continuous real-time customer feedback loop which colleagues have access into. By delivering on these elements and leading by example, we can take our people with us and share a vision of every customer receiving great customer service.