MORE THAN A MEASURE
C-Mex gives a more rounded measure of services that companies deliver to all residential customers
Customers in England and Wales will benefit from a new incentive on water companies to deliver improved services to them during 2020-25 – the Customer Measure of Experience (C-Mex). But how will it work? Rebekah Eden, Director, and Ian Bannon, Principal, from Ofwat explain more. When Ofwat carried out the 2019 Price Review (PR19), great customer service was one of our four key themes for services for 2020-25. This wasn’t just a theme we plucked out of thin air. As we said in our strategy, Time to act, together, water is vital for life – not just for people but for the environment and ecosystem on which we depend. This means that customers in England and Wales feel differently about water to other services: they need to trust that water and wastewater companies are serving the public benefit. But, at the same time, customers expect great service, at least comparable to the service they get elsewhere. By introducing C-MeX, we aim to drive companies harder to continually improve the level of service they deliver to their
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customers at all stages of service delivery. We want them to not just strive to deliver the best service in the sector, but among the very best in other sectors. Because being a monopoly isn’t an excuse for poor service; it’s an opportunity for great service.
C-Mex to see more C-MeX should drive the 17 largest water companies in England and Wales to provide an excellent customer experience for the 2020-25 period. It is a relative service target (‘performance commitment’) that is common to all of the companies and comparing them against each other. It is also one of a number of financial and nonfinancial rewards and penalties (‘Outcome Delivery Incentives’ (ODIs)) we introduced to encourage companies to deliver all round better services to customers, the environment and society.
What is an Outcome delivery incentive (ODI)? ODI’s are the financial or reputational (non-financial) incentives for companies to outperform and avoid underperformance against each of their performance commitments. Most performance commitments have ODIs that will be assessed and settled on an annual basis during the price control period (an ‘in-period’ adjustment). C-MeX is one of those that is measured and assessed annually, so it directly encourages companies to do better year after year.
