Southern Water welcomes Katy Taylor to a newly-created role of Chief Customer Officer.
Her appointment to the role and the Executive Leadership Team is an important step forward in Southern Water's commitment to make significant progress in the service it provides to consumer and commercial customers. She is expected to take up her post in August.
Katy joins Southern Water from Go-Ahead, the FTSE 250 transport company, where she is Chief Strategy and Customer Officer, responsible for strategy, sustainability, customer experience, corporate affairs, commercial development and marketing.
Prior to Go-Ahead, Katy worked across a variety of well known financial and professional service firms leading change programmes to deliver growth. She also has extensive experience of leading culture change programmes, reputation strategy, development of climate change strategy and digitisation of customer service and retail channels.
Katy is non-executive director on the Board of Anchor Hanover, England's largest not-for-profit provider of housing and care for older people. She is also currently Chairman of Ontrack Retail, an ecommerce start-up that builds app and retails tickets for travel.
Katy has represented the public transport industry at events including parliamentary select committees, and Conservative party conferences and chaired industry-wide committees to drive improvements in customer and diversity.
Ian McAulay, Southern Water CEO, said: "I am delighted she is joining our team and I am confident that as well as driving forward the transformation our customers and business retailer customers deserve, she will ensure they are always at the heart of all our strategic decision making, which is exactly where they should be.
"Katy's appointment is an opportunity to ensure we have the strongest possible focus on customer and developer services satisfaction, two critical measures of our performance. The remit for her role as Chief Customer Officer has absolute focus on this critical area of our business where further improvements are still needed."
Commenting on her appointment, Katy said: "I am delighted to be joining the team at Southern Water, to support their journey towards a more customer focussed service. I believe that water, like public transport, is vital to our customers and communities in living healthy, active lives. It also has an incredibly important role to play in protecting the environment for future generations. Being able to positively impact the lives of Southern Water's colleagues, customers and communities is a challenge that I very much look forward to beginning."
Katy's appointment builds from the great work done by Jamie Ford, current Director of Customer and Commercial Services who leaves the company this month.
Ian added: "Jamie has played a key role in our ongoing journey of transformation and leaves with our thanks for his work over the last three years."