After the bailout of Royal Bank of Scotland, I pitched a story to a broadsheet news editor. Several friends who worked at the bank believed in its vision and had invested in the bank through employee share schemes.

They were not City bankers but ordinary staff in branches, call centres and back offices. When the bank was rescued, their life savings were all but wiped out. They were the hidden victims.

The pitch was rejected.

‘It’s too soon for that story,’ I was told. ‘The public has no sympathy.’

I was reminded of that exchange recently while chatting to the director of corporate affairs at a water company. Their company is investing heavily in infrastructure and environmental improvements, while paying for the mistakes of past management.

It has notched up some successes, but has done little to publicise these. Not that there is any media appetite.

Some pollution incidents, they explained, are caused by fluctuations in power supplies, which can trigger spillages. Ultimately, though, the water company takes the flak.

Front-line colleagues have been verbally abused, threatened and, on occasion, pelted with urine and excrement while doing their jobs. Staff are advised to remove company lanyards before travelling home. Many are proud of the work they do, whether restoring water supplies or improving the environment, but reluctant to say so publicly.

There are no employee advocates chatting loudly about their work in the pub lest they face a verbal onslaught from other drinkers. They are the modern equivalent of those RBS staff – bearing the reputational consequences of decisions in which they played no part.

Rebuilding reputation is hard, but it is not complex. Provide products and services customers want. Do what you say you are going to do. Be transparent when things go wrong. Explain the steps you are taking to fix them. Repeat. Constantly.

But trust arrives on a horse and leaves in a Ferrari. The banks always knew that when a customer’s card fails with a trolley full of shopping, it was back to square one.

The financial sector predicted it would take a generation, roughly 25 years, to rebuild its reputation. That proved too pessimistic. Stricter regulatory oversight played a role, but banks also simplified their fees and explained lending and overdraft charges in plain English.

They invested in new technology and products, while supporting local communities and small businesses, particularly through Covid. They leaned into their respective corporate purposes.

Today, while people may not love banks, they trust them to look after their money and to provide suitable financial products. And if dissatisfied, it is now easy to swap to a competitor.

Water companies face a harder challenge. They are local monopolies. Their customers are captive, so frustrations have no outlet (pun not intended). Water flows from taps. Toilets flush. For most customers, that’s the beginning and end of their relationship.

And therein lies the problem. A utility that does its job is invisible. Nobody gives thanks when the kettle fills. It’s expected. Reliability earns no credit.

Banks had an advantage. Each time they scrapped a charge or improved a process, customers noticed. Water improvements happen underground or out of sight, and their benefits often arrive years after the bills that paid for them.

Fundamentally, water customers’ anger is not about the product. It is about the money. They believe they paid for investment that never happened while dividends flowed out and debts piled up. So when a water company announces a multibillion-pound investment programme, they don’t hear improvement. They hear that they are being charged twice.

Drawing on all the conversations I’ve had in recent months, I’d argue the reputation playbook needs adapting.

Follow the money. Customers should be able to see (and understand) where every pound of their bill goes: running the network, investment, debt and shareholders. If the numbers are uncomfortable, better the company publishes them than a campaign group.

Make progress local. A multi-billion-pound programme means nothing to customers. A named storm overflow that will spill less often, with data anyone can check, means a great deal. Engage with grassroots groups.

Borrow credibility. If editors have no appetite for water company good news, find another messenger. A chalk stream restored with a local rivers trust has more credibility if announced by that trust.

Own the past. The logo on the van hasn’t changed. Customers don’t distinguish between current and previous management. Reputation is inherited, whether that’s fair or not.

Reputations can be rebuilt. Just ask the banks. So, the good news for water companies is that trust can return. The bad news is that it happens one repaired water main at a time. This might take a generation.

Lights out, reputation intact: NIE Network's storm lesson

At the Corporate Affairs Summit in Ireland, Peter McClenaghan, head of communications and engagement at NIE Networks, explained how the electricity utility emerged from Storm Éowyn with its reputation enhanced, even though 326,000 homes lost power, some for up to ten days.

The company knew how much was riding on its response. In 1998, its handling of a storm that cut power to more than 100,000 homes was so poor that the reputational damage lingered for over a decade.

As a monopoly, NIE Networks answers to three key stakeholders: its system operator, the Department for the Economy and the Utility Regulator. Customer satisfaction influences the regulator’s assessment of the business, shaping price controls, performance targets and potential penalties that can materially affect its outlook and profitability.

Reputation is therefore more than a communications concern; it is a business asset.

McClenaghan attributes NIE Networks' success to three factors: rigorous preparation, proactive multi-channel communications, and a strong organisational ethos rooted in empathy and service.

Preparation was critical. NIE Networks is a storm-ready organisation, accustomed to restoring power after major outages. It has local incident centres across Northern Ireland and storm response teams, which work on a six-week rotation. Each week's rota includes a duty comms person and a duty online person. That gave McClenaghan's core team of 10 or 12 an extra 12 trained people who knew the drill.

The company was also honest about timelines, setting expectations early with both politicians and the public. The day after Storm Éowyn, customers could enter their postcode on the NIE Networks website to get an estimated restoration time. The estimates were not always precise, but they helped households make informed decisions about whether to stay put or find somewhere else to stay.

As McClenaghan put it: ‘If you leave people hanging without information… you're much more likely to have people really fed up and frustrated with you.’

While his comms team had planned statements and information for the public, what they initially lacked was content. Field teams were asked for images and videos from the frontline.

One clip of an NIE Networks linesman climbing a pole to repair broken wires got 1.6 million views on social media, giving customers a vivid sense of both the scale of the challenge and the conditions engineers were working in.

It also changed attitudes internally. Field crews who had previously viewed comms staff with cameras as a nuisance came to see the value of telling the story of the response. Those who proved adept at capturing footage during Storm Éowyn have since been written into the crisis structure as designated content runners.

Traditional media was not neglected; the storm led the news for ten days. McClenaghan’s team supplied content on demand and offered opportunities to visit sites when safe to do so, helping the company drive the narrative.

By the end of the first week, when 90 per cent of homes were reconnected, media coverage was portraying NIE Networks ‘almost as the good guys’. McClenaghan's verdict: ‘Feeding that traditional media beast is still hugely important in a crisis like that.’

Every NIE Networks employee, with the exception of McClenaghan, has a dual role written into their contract. During the storm there was no business as usual.

All 1,600 staff were on storm duty. Senior finance staff gave advice in community centres in Enniskillen. Stakeholder managers took calls in the contact centre. Its team of 100 meter readers visited customers on the vulnerable customer register, handing out hot water bottles and support.

Even the smallest acts carry risk. Staff buying bread at Tesco to make sandwiches for field crews have been heckled in past storms for not being out working. ‘So even a trip to Tesco has a reputational risk,’ McClenaghan observed.

Research later commissioned by the Utility Regulator, a representative survey of 1,000 Northern Ireland consumers, found that among those who had lost power in severe weather, being kept informed about restoration times ranked second only to getting the power back on. Nearly nine in ten placed it in their top three priorities.

McClenaghan's own reading of the feedback was that ‘consumers praised our response to the storm, praised our communications response to the storm’.

The experience reinforces the lesson that reputation is not built by messaging alone. It is earned through operational delivery, backed by honest communication and thousands of small acts of service.

Just saying

When a CEO replaces three communications directors in as many years, I’d say the problem is less to do with comms than with the CEO. But what do I know?

Book for this year’s Corporate Affairs Summit

Have you ever put your foot in it?

Gerald Ratner knows all about that. A celebrated businessman, he delivered a speech at the Institute of Directors in which he mocked his products - and then saw his global business disappear almost overnight.

Gerald will be sharing how he ‘did the first Ratner’ at this year’s Corporate Affairs Summit on 7 October. And why, even in jest, it’s best not to describe your products as cr*p.

I’ll also be joined on stage by Alice Macandrew, the outgoing corporate affairs director at the BBC, who has promised a no holds barred conversation about leading communications for a national institution.

And Russ Brady, director of group communications at Co-op, will be offering his lessons learned from the cyber attack that cost it £206 million in lost sales.

And there’s plenty more on offer.

Booking deets are here. If you can’t commit to a full day, share the ticket with a colleague – as long as you agree beforehand who gets lunch! 😉 

Alas, before anybody else asks, it is only open to senior in-house professionals.