Today, 3 April, marks the seventh anniversary of the opening of the non-household water market. Following a weekend of 24/7 operations managing the cutover of customer data into Gentrack Velocity, 3 April 2017 was the first day we began to serve customers.
We had defined our purpose, “to be the most customer focused utility delivering value and efficiency in everything we do” and the customer focus was supported on day one by our Velocity Super Heroes. They assisted anyone who needed help with how to use the system to resolve customer queries as the phones started to ring.
Wave CEO, Lucy Darch, commented, “My career has centered around start-ups in the utility sector, but this was the first time I’ve led a former incumbent supplier into a deregulating market, and it was the hardest journey I’ve experienced because on day one we had around 120,000 customers. So, the stakes were very high in terms of getting everything in place to support this scale of business from new recruits and training, new offices and systems all executed in the context of a new market with the ambiguity that this type of environment brings.”
Seven years on, Wave is serving 300,000 customers and is continuing to strive towards its purpose, and we’re seeing more and more proof points to show we’re achieving this. Exceptionally high levels of people engagement, customer retention, 5* Trustpilot reviews and attracting the best talent to join us, all feel like progress we can be very proud of.
