Customer Experience in the Water Sector - Annual Monitoring Survey (SIM)

The overall objective of the customer survey research is to support Ofwat’s strategy by:

• Providing a robust, comparable measure of customers' experience and how satisfied they are with the overall handling of an actual recent contact with their water or sewerage supplier.

• Conducting research using a sample that covers all aspects of a Company’s business, and from the contact channels listed in the Approach to Sampling section below.

• Producing data that is sufficiently robust to distinguish between performance levels in different Companies each year, so that this can be used to determine the level of financial rewards and penalties that should be imposed on individual companies at PR19. Combined data for 2015-16 to 2018-19 must also be capable of supporting Ofwat's decisions on financial incentives in 2019, in a way similar to that in 2014 .

The questionnaire that will be used in the survey is included in Appendix A. This will enable comparison between Companies each year and between years for each Company. It will also allow comparisons with other sectors. The research will expose where Companies are or are not meeting customers’ expectations, and why.

Research objectives

The main research objective is to explore customers' views on their direct contact with their water company.

The research will explore:

• How customers initially contacted the Company (telephone, email, letter, website etc);

• The reason for them making contact with the water company;

• How satisfied customers were with their water company’s overall handling of their contact;

• Reasons why they were satisfied or not, and what the water company could have done better; and

• How customers compare their experience with their water company to recent experience with other sectors. (Inter-sector comparison questions are asked in one wave per year only; all other questions are asked in every wave).

Scope

The survey will cover the 18 water companies in England and Wales and is for the next 3 years, April 2016 to March 2019. Each of the water companies is different but they broadly fall into two categories.

Firstly, there are those which provide a combined service, delivering both water and waste water services (water and sewerage companies), and secondly there are those which provide only a water service (water only companies).

Water companies vary considerably in size and operate in different regions.

Information on this is included in Appendix B, together with the indicative size of the sample provision from surveys carried out during 2013-14.

Key Tasks

Summary overview

• Carry out four Customer Experience in the Water Sector survey waves (total of 800 questionnaires for each of the 18 Companies in the year) for each of the 3 years.

• Produce reports after each survey wave.

• Produce report at end of each survey year.

• Present at end of each survey year.

Additional information: For further information, please contact: procurement@ofwat.gsi.gov.uk