Castle Water, the UK's largest independent business water retailer, celebrated its 8th anniversary on Sunday 17th April.
In a bumper year for the company, the last twelve months have seen Castle Water invest significantly in its service platforms, fulfil ambitious plans to improve self-service options for customers, demonstrate its commitment to reducing its carbon footprint, and save millions of pounds for its customers through market leading initiatives.
Standing out amongst competitors
In October 2021, Castle Water's CEO, John Reynolds confirmed the company's plans for significant growth and investment. On the stability of the company, John noted that Castle Water is in a very strong position, as despite a drop in revenue, the company has seen a rise in profits before tax.
Millions saved for customers
Castle Water saved its customers over £6 million in a market leading initiative during the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.
John said, “We found a way to reduce customers’ fixed charges at the start of the lockdown, which made life easier for them. It resulted in a lot of work for us, but it means that we were able to save customers about £6m total in charges, which is significant. A lot of customers have said we’re the only utility supplier that’s actually been helping them. We take a long-term view of customer relationships and wanted to do as much as possible to be helpful and it helps us if it helps our customers.”
Investing in customer experience
Castle Water released a number of new features to its customer portal, MyAccount, in the last year, including Statement of Accounts, Find my water meter and Account balances. A major update to the portal in December 2021 saw MyAccount released to Castle Water customers in Scotland, making the portal available to all UK customers. The update was part of a long-term strategy to expand online self-service options for Castle Water customers.
In November 2021, Castle Water won the Customer Service Excellence Award at the annual Perthshire Chamber of Commerce business awards, and shortly after earned its 10,000th 5-star customer review on Trustpilot. Castle Water's latest customer service update for March 2022 reported 100% of live chats with customers were answered within 30 seconds, and 90% of Trustpilot reviews were 4 or 5-star for the period October 2021 - March 2022.
Helping to protect the environment
Castle Water carbon balanced its printing operations in August last year in a bid to combat its carbon emissions footprint, and in March this year auto-enrolled thousands of eligible customers in Scotland to paperless billing.
David Bain, Director of Digital and Marketing for Castle Water said, "Like many of our customers, we’ve been making changes to become more sustainable and minimise our impact on the environment. Paperless billing gives our customers a fast, reliable and eco-friendly way of billing, that removes the delays often associated with postal delivery.
Today, over 90% of Castle Water customers in Scotland are on paperless billing, further reducing the company's emissions. Customers in England and Scotland can opt-in to paperless billing on MyAccount.
In December 2021, Castle Water completed a year-long project to install 4,500 Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) devices free of charge to eligible customers, saving customers over £2.67 million in installation costs and a further £9 million per year in potential leakage costs. AMR gives customers access to more information about their water consumption and alerts them to leaks, helping to better control water use to improve sustainability and reduce costs.
Notes For Editors
About Castle Water
Castle Water is the largest independent water retailer in the UK. We supply business water services to hundreds of thousands of nationwide companies, charities and public bodies. Castle Water are licensed providers of water services in Scotland and England; and are regulated by the Water Industry Commission for Scotland and Ofwat. Our customer services are all UK based and delivered in-house. For further information about Castle Water, visit our website: www.castlewater.co.uk.
For press enquiries, contact:
Emma Smith
Marketing Communications Manager
emma.smith@castlewater.co.uk