Blog takeover with Castle Water Expert: Catriona Bell

Tell us about your role at Castle Water

As part of the Industrial and Commercial team, I manage one-half of the Sales and Onboarding team for customers in England. I work closely alongside the Bid and Proposal team, which manages sales for our Industrial and Commercial, and Crown Commercial Services (CCS) customers. Additionally, I manage the Onboarding of new customers, whether a single site or large multi-site portfolios, ensuring that our customers are switched efficiently and smoothly. I'm on hand to support the business on non-default tariffs and all things contracts. To support this, I work alongside the Marketing team in the development of customer campaigns and collateral including, Welcome Packs and Webinars.

How important is good communication to your team?

Good communication is really important, as we need to ensure our messages are clear and easily understandable to customers. The water market is still relatively young, especially compared to our Energy counterparts, and we often find that customers reference Energy terminology, so we need to ensure we spend the time to clearly explain how the quote is calculated or what the contract terms are – it needs to be kept simple.

Our dedicated Portfolio Managers are on-hand to support our CCS customers every step of the way, and help them to get the most out of their Castle Water account. Over and above this, we work hard to ensure all our communication with our CCS customers is timely, appropriate, and helpful at all stages of the Framework process and beyond. From our Introduction Packs and live webinars during the aggregation process to tailored Welcome Packs and our dedicated CCS eNewsletter, everything is designed to support the customer and provide multiple channels and styles of communication.

How does Castle Water tailor its service for CCS customers?

We have been serving customers in England since 2016 and entered the open market alongside its deregulation in April 2017, we have grown with the market and understand its simplicities as well as its complexities. We have the industry knowledge to service customers of all sizes and industries whether you are a council office or a complex Hospital with Trade Effluent.

As a Crown Commercial Service supplier, our dedicated Public Sector Team work in partnership with our CCS customers to reduce water costs, support efficiency and help to meet environmental and sustainability targets. We have extensive experience in implementing large-scale contracts via the CCS Framework. Since joining the Framework in 2017, Castle Water has successfully transferred over 250 customers with c.7,000 water, waste, and trade effluent Supply Point Identifiers (SPIDs). The majority of these have been via large-scale transfers and include complex and multisite public sector customers.

Authorities on the CCS framework also benefit from a dedicated customer service team that operates a helpdesk from 8 am to 6 pm, Monday to Friday throughout the year. In addition, we provide helpdesk support and assistance to CCS Customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We make it easy for all our customers to manage their Castle Water account online with our customer portal, MyAccount. We recently announced that customers can now view their account balance in MyAccount, which is an extremely helpful addition to its existing features.

Our contract through the Crown Commercial Service framework provides our CCS customers with water services, but we can also offer a range of water retail services. We can offer customers expertise ranging from Water Management Services such as Automatic Meter Reading (AMR), Water efficiency advice, and Water Audits to complex billing requirements including Trade Effluent and Consolidated Billing. Unlike other Retailers, we are wholly independent and have an excellent track record of working proactively with Network Owners to give our customers the best service at the fairest price.

Our Values underpin everything thing that we do, and perhaps the most important one is Honesty. There are no hidden costs at Castle Water, and we are very clear with how our rates are calculated and the difference between Wholesaler and Retailer costs.