Thames Water : Leading from the front

Customers get the reassurance of a high-ranking messenger.

The Site

Thames Water, a UK utility, enables its chief executive to show ownership for some unwelcome news for its customers.

Thames Water has a picture panel headed ‘Your water bill’ to the right of its home page and immediately below the main featured-content display. The panel has a stripped-in head-and-shoulders photograph of a man above the caption ‘Our Chief Executive explains the new charges’ and a Find out more button.

Clicking the button opens a news release page in the Media section. The text is an ‘in-quotes’ statement about the annual rise in charges that also bears the signature of the chief executive, David Owens, as well as a repeat of the photograph, this time with caption. A short introduction says that he will explain “how these charges are agreed and what this means for you”.

The Takeaway

While across-the-board increases in prices are hardly on a par with steering a company down the drain, they are still bad news for customers to swallow in difficult times. So, it’s a bold move by Thames Water to flag the announcement so visibly and for Mr Owens to identify himself so closely with it. Investment analysts may expect this level of messenger, but customers do not.

As a piece of public relations or reputation management it’s likely to have a positive effect for the company – the statement inevitably carries more weight with the top man’s signature on it and it will play well with employees to see him leading the charge. As a bit of site management it shows a well-integrated strategy – the feature appeared at the same time as the new bills were starting to drop through customers’ letterboxes.

First published on 03 March, 2009