Water retailer water2business has achieved the top score for customer service on the international review website Trustpilot. It is the first water company to be awarded the perfect 5.0 rating.
Since it was founded in 2017, water2business, which is part of YTL Group UK, has set out to excel in customer service and this award is recognition of their whole ethos.
The Trustpilot score works over a rolling 12-month period. Of the 117 reviews water2business received, 115 of them were five-star ratings, with two four-star.
Managing Director Andy Coates said that in the past he and his team had discussed aiming for the holy grail of customer service excellence, but had never thought it possible to achieve what no other water company ever has – a perfect score.
He said: “I am extremely proud of this truly remarkable achievement. It is down to the hard work of all our staff and their commitment to delivering excellent customer service day in, day out.”
Based in Nailsea, near Bristol, water2business started proactively collecting Trustpilot reviews in 2020 and since then has gained 788 reviews which they use as marketing material to retain existing customers and attract new business.
Andy said: “We have always maintained a strong score, being 4.8 to 4.9 from 2020 to 2021 and then having held 4.9 for the past three years. We’d almost assumed that actually obtaining 5.0 was impossible. Lo and behold this week we’ve managed it! Our historical performance speaks for itself – only eight reviews in five years have been below four stars and in the past 12 months, we have no reviews below four-star. This consistency is what has finally driven our score to 5.0.”
He added that the key to achieving a high ranking was to proactively assess all reviews, provide an immediate response, and look for trends both good and bad within the responses. Critically, any review below a four-star rating is treated as a complaint and immediately escalated to the Director of Customer Services, who will contact the customer and try to resolve any issues. This has resulted in converting a number of low scores to an improved four or five-star rating.
Andy said: “This approach alongside our great consistency of service has driven us to be the first and only water company to achieve a 5.0 score. We have around 70 staff, and 80,000 customers from large supermarkets to football clubs and hotel chains.
“Quite a lot of the time, customers use Trustpilot as a forum to vent – we ensure they are heard and we react, respond and resolve quickly.”
Trustpilot hosts reviews of businesses worldwide. Nearly 1 million new reviews are posted each month.
