Water and Sewerage Services - Online Community

Descriptions

Yorkshire Water (YW) provide water and sewerage services to over 5 million people and 140,000 businesses in Yorkshire. We collect and treat over 1 billion litres of water every day. We operate over 670 water and treatment works and manage 100,000 kilometres of pipes. Every 5 years, YW, alongside other water companies, submit a business plan to the industry regulator Ofwat, outlining the investment we plan to make in the next 5 years and the impact this will have on customer's bills. In the sector, this planning process is called a price review, we are currently amidst of price review 2024 or PR24. The most recent business plan was submitted on October 2nd, 2023. The water industry faces increased scrutiny at the moment from customers and regulators due to negative press media regarding storm overflows. This means that expectations regarding business plans are higher than ever, and due to the cost-of-living crisis, bill increases are a huge concern to many people. Therefore, the PR24 business plan required considerable customer research to be undertaken to ensure that our business plan was formed with customer needs at its heart. Several of these customer research projects were carried out on our online community 'Your Water'. Originally launched in 2017 to support the previous business planning process, our online community has since grown to become an integral part of our customer insight programme. The online community has a sample of approximately 3,800 customers. Our members take part in a wide range of projects on a regular basis that are then used to inform key business decisions. For one PR24 project, we tested the acceptability and affordability of our Page 4 to 8 business plan with customers. This allowed us to determine how supportive customers were of our business plan, and how they felt about the projected bill impact. In addition to the PR24 projects, we have also carried out projects to inform the development of our communication campaigns and helped YW make important industry and policy decisions. The online community was also an indispensable source of customer insight during the covid pandemic, allowing us to continue engaging with customers during lockdowns, and understand the impact that the lockdowns were having on them. The time has come to retender our online community. Going forward, we would like to develop the online community further, we would like to increase its potential, make it even more engaging for our customers and continue to ensure it will meet the needs of the business.