South Staffs Water PLC (SSC) provides a secure and reliable supply of high quality drinking water to approximately 1.6 million people in its two areas of supply – South Staffs and Cambridge.
Turquoise Thinking provides utilities market research to a number of Oil & Gas, Electricity and Water companies on an ongoing basis, including regular tracking research for South Staffs Water (SSC).
In 2019, South Staffs approached Turquoise, keen to review their Customer Promise Tracking Study to see how it could be optimised. Turquoise designed and implemented a customer tracker for SSC and have been working with them ever since on an ongoing basis.
Approach
Each month, Turquoise surveys both Household (domestic) and Non-Household (business) customers from both the South Staffs Water and Cambridge Water regions. This continuous tracking study incorporates a mix of online surveys and telephone interviews from our in-house CATi (Computer Aided Telephone Interview) unit.
The survey is used to measure household and business customer satisfaction with key service areas:
- Overall service
- Value for money
- How quickly leaks are repaired
- Water quality
- Reliability of water supply
- Water pressure
The customer tracker also measures agreement with brand statements, trust of South Staffs Water, brand perceptions and customer attitudes.
Over the years, the customer tracker has been adapted where necessary to keep in line with South Staffs objectives and maintain relevancy. For example, new questions regarding the pandemic were added in order to monitor and track the impact of COVID-19 on customers.
The methodology used has also been altered over time to optimise results. The customer tracker research started out exclusively as a telephone sample and moved to a mixed methodology of telephone and online in order to better reach the target demographic.
Insight
The customer tracker research highlights areas of concern for customers, allowing South Staffs to drive improvements based on the findings; as well as highlighting areas where South Staffs is performing well, to ensure service levels are maintained in these areas.