Why are we talking to customers?
Our strategies and plans
Finding out when and where customers want us to invest
It’s vital for us to understand our customers’ and other stakeholders’ views on where and how we should spend money to be sure there is always enough clean water to go round. This means our latest Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP) fully reflects what’s really important to them. We write these plans every five years. They describe how we work out how much water we need to supply all our customers over the next 25 years and beyond.
What customers told us
Find out what our customers told us about each of these areas:
How are we using the feedback
We have used all the feedback from customers and other stakeholders to develop our Water Resources Management Plan.
In addition, we have also used this feedback to work out where and when it is best to spend our customers’ money to make sure we have safe and reliable water supplies now and in the future. The big investments we are making are outlined in our business plan for the period 2020-2025 and beyond.
Who we spoke to
Watch the video below to find out what the customers who attended our events thought of the areas we discussed with them.
We invited 32 South Staffs Water household customers and small business owners to an all-day event in July. Here we explained to them what we do and the challenges we face when meeting the demand for providing clean water to every customer. We asked for their feedback on the areas they thought were a priority for them.
Two weeks later we then invited these customers back to another half day event. Here we told them more about the ways we could spend their money in the future to ensure there was always water to meet customer demand and asked for their views on which ones they thought we should do. We did this by giving them a number of options and asked them to imagine they were advising our senior management team on which areas we should invest in to ensure there is always enough water for every customer. We did this in a fun and educational way to help them understand the choices we have to make.
Following this, we also gained the views of:
Who carried out the study?
After a thorough selection process, we chose the independent research agency Community Research to carry out this study. This is so that the feedback we received is totally independent and unbiased.
Our independent customer panel also reviewed and challenged how we approached this work. This was so we could be sure we asked customers the right questions and that we correctly interpreted what they said.