Helping Anglian Water’s customers to love every drop

Driving up customer satisfaction is essential for Anglian Water. Yet, as a water company which provides a service which many people don’t think much about, this can be a challenging ambition.

While the day to day customer service provided by Anglian Water undoubtedly plays a vital role in improving customer satisfaction levels (from fixing leaks and unblocking pipes to responding to call centre enquiries quickly), given the low levels of day to day contact the organisation has with the vast majority of customers, how the brand is communicated is also extremely important.

Recognising this Anglian Water’s communications seek to make it clear what the organisation does and what their brand stands for, seeking to move from a place where users of their services have little or no interest or knowledge in what they do to one where customers care about and appreciate what the organisation does. The ultimate aim of their communications is to help customers to understand Anglian Water’s brand purpose and the relevance this has to their own lives and those of others living in their community.

Brand tracking

We are delighted to have been working with Anglian Water for the last year to undertake analysis and reporting of their brand tracking research. This research programme involves quarterly ‘dips’ surveying a representative sample of customers from across the Anglian Water region. The survey tracks a number of key indicators including brand awareness, knowledge, advocacy and how well they are delivering against a number of strategic areas of focus such as sustainability, value and community engagement.

The research also allows us to test the effectiveness of Anglian Water’s communications (for example see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X6TZaulQwI) to evaluate to what extent communications are reaching their target audiences, the messages being taken, how these are impacting on people’s opinions of the brand and any actions taken as a result.

Business impact

The results from the brand tracking are proving invaluable to Anglian Water by giving them the actionable insights they need to pursue their brand, comms and creative strategies. This has included identification of the key drivers of positive brand perception and customer satisfaction and a deeper understanding of how to connect the brand, comms and customer experience. 

If you’d like to discuss how 56 Degree Insight can support you in your brand and communications evaluation or would like to hear more about the work that we are doing in the utilities sector, please get in touch.

Assisting Anglian Water to help their customers to love every drop

As an essential service which homes and businesses can’t live without, customer service is essential in the water sector. Yet, the services delivered by water companies are taken for granted by most of us and our interactions with water companies tend to be few and far between.

Indeed, if asked to provide our opinion on our water company it’s likely that many of us might opt for the Don’t Know option or gravitate towards the middle of the scale if presented with the classic Net Promoter Score rating question. Feelings of indifference are common when it comes to water and many of us don’t have a full appreciation of the full scope of services provided by and supported by our water company.

However, although levels of customer engagement tend to be low, given the critical nature of the services they provide, water companies can’t afford to ignore customer experience. In England and Wales the regulator, Ofwat, measures household customer’s levels of satisfaction using C-MeX (Customer Measure of Experience). The results of the surveys which feed into this measure are taken very seriously by all of the water companies, not least because those companies which perform above average are rewarded financially while those performing below par are penalised.

During the last year we’ve been delighted to be working with Anglian Water to help them to tackle the issues of low customer engagement with the sector and to identify the best ways for them to boost levels of customer satisfaction.Recognising how many people take the water that comes through their tap for granted, Anglian Water have an ambition to change how people think and feel about their brand, moving from a position where people have little or no interest to one where the organisation and its work feels more relevant to them and their communities. The advertisement below is an example of how they are seeking to do this with the key message that “Water is our business, but there is so much more we do for the people, communities and environment we look after.”

During the last year we’ve helped Anglian Water to gain valuable insights from a range of data sources available to them including their quarterly brand and communications tracking and the data available from the Ofwat surveys which drive the all-important C-MeX score.

Our work is supporting Anglian Water by making the most of the data collected from these existing surveys, helping them to move from a position of simply tracking satisfaction and communication metrics to one where they have a clearer understanding of the actions needed to become more meaningful to and appreciated by customers.

If you’d like to find out more about our work in utilities, brand and communications or customer experience research please get in touch.