Water Utilities Customer Research: Methods & Brief
Water utilities customer research connects service improvements with household bills. Learn what to commission and how to separate plan support from payment difficulty.
Water utilities customer research examines service needs, investment priorities and what proposed changes would mean for households. Present each feasible improvement with its bill, then ask separately whether customers accept the plan and expect to manage the payment. This guide shows what to commission, who to include and how to use the answers.
Research can inform the service plan, its timing, practical support and the explanation customers receive. Those decisions differ from choosing a voluntary product. If households depend on the supplied network, declining the proposed improvement does not necessarily let them decline the underlying bill.
Choose a research partner that can examine the complete service-and-bill package. Connect feasible changes with their household consequences and keep plan acceptance separate from ability to manage the bill.
Example: choosing the order of service improvements
Shorewater is a hypothetical water utility preparing a household service-investment plan. Its program options and possible customer responses form the worked commissioning brief below.
In this case, households use the local network and cannot simply select another household supplier. Shorewater's technical and policy teams have already defined the work that must proceed. The research does not offer customers a vote on removing that baseline.
The open decision concerns the sequence of additional feasible improvements. One program addresses recurring supply interruptions earlier. Another brings forward work intended to reduce sewer overflows. The planning team supplies the expected service changes, delivery periods, uncertainties and household bill profiles for each program. It must also explain what happens if neither additional program proceeds.
The research partner's job is to help the team understand those choices and their consequences for customers. It cannot turn an unfunded promise into a feasible option or establish an engineering outcome through an opinion survey. Resolve those inputs with the people responsible for them before showing a plan to participants.
Our market research services guide explains how to commission work around a decision and the evidence needed to make it. For a water-utility engagement, specify the service-plan choices the findings can influence, who owns each choice and which conditions the research must treat as fixed.
Present an improvement with the bill that belongs to it
Shorewater initially proposes asking customers to rank the two improvements, then asking separately about support for investment. The team would not know whether people considered the relevant bill when choosing.
Instead, commission materials that let customers understand a complete, feasible program. State the starting service, the proposed change, when people could expect it and the corresponding bill path. Explain whether a displayed amount is the whole bill or an addition to it, and which period it covers. The company's qualified team should verify those facts and the assumptions behind them.
Check the materials with intended participants before the main study. Ask people to explain what would change for their household and what the bill information means. Someone may read a multi-year increase as a one-time payment or assume the improvement is already included in their present service. Revise unclear material before treating a rating as a response to the intended package.
CCW’s May 2025 review of PR24 research guidance describes work on investment preferences and the affordability and acceptability of proposed business plans. It reviews research for the 2025–2030 planning period in England and Wales and discusses learning for a later review. Use it as a regional example of the research problem; establish the applicable expectations for your own engagement.
Present each feasible option fairly, including its service consequences, uncertainty and any relevant alternative. Emphasizing an attractive benefit while putting the bill in a footnote gives participants a different decision from the one the planning team needs to understand.
Affordability and acceptability are separate answers
An acceptable service plan is not automatically an affordable household bill. A customer may value the improvement and still report that the proposed payment would be difficult to manage. Another may be able to pay but reject the proposed priorities, timing or distribution of benefits.
Ask about these dimensions separately and keep each person’s answers connected in the data. Subtracting headline percentages cannot recover that relationship. The table shows possible response combinations, not observed Shorewater findings:
A customer's response | What the planning team needs to investigate |
|---|---|
Supports the plan and expects to manage the bill | Why the package works for this customer and which assumptions their answer depends on. |
Supports the plan but expects difficulty managing the bill | The burden, timing and relevant support question, without relabeling the customer as opposed to the improvement. |
Expects to manage the bill but rejects the plan | The service priorities, distribution of benefits, credibility or other reasons behind rejection. |
Rejects the plan and expects bill difficulty | Both concerns, with enough follow-up to understand how they interact. |
These answers guide different pieces of work. Reported difficulty can identify a problem the company needs to understand; it does not itself establish eligibility for a support program or predict which households will miss a payment. Those decisions need their appropriate evidence and responsible teams.
If a customer supports earlier interruption work but would struggle with the associated bill increase, investigate how the burden arises and which feasible change might address it. More persuasive descriptions of uninterrupted supply would not answer that question.
If the company proposes assistance, test a verified description of the actual support available, including the conditions that matter to the customer. An unspecified promise that help will exist cannot establish that this household could obtain it. Retain the distinction between acceptance of the service plan and acceptance under a particular support arrangement.
Households face different service and bill consequences
An overall view can hide different experiences. Include customers affected by recurring interruptions, those expecting benefits elsewhere in the network and those who report difficulty managing existing bills. Consider who receives, understands and pays the household bill.
Agree who to include and how to recruit them. Ask how the provider will reach relevant groups, make participation accessible and keep the differences needed to interpret answers. People unable to attend a lengthy online discussion still belong in the planning team’s understanding.
CCW's 2022 research on customer preferences emphasizes the customer consequences of decisions and identifies affordability, resilience and fairness as important considerations. For Shorewater, that suggests explaining what the proposed work means for people, rather than asking them to appraise infrastructure terminology they have not been equipped to assess.
Use qualitative work to explain a difficult reaction or misunderstood choice. For a population estimate, agree a quantitative design and the limits of the estimates. A discussion with a small selected group cannot tell you the proportion of all households who accept the plan.
Our customer satisfaction research agency guide addresses a different commission: understanding an experience customers have already received and the changes it calls for. Existing service evidence can inform the planning study, but satisfaction with past service does not answer whether a future investment-and-bill package is acceptable or manageable.
For a different public-service planning question, our transport market research guide shows why an onboard passenger survey can miss people whose full travel day the current timetable cannot serve. Its intended travel market differs from the captive household customer base in this utility example.
A useful readout changes the next piece of work
Ask for more than a single support score: the complete materials, question wording and sequence, audience reached and an explanation of how the analysis connects answers to the available decisions.
Returned evidence | Decision it should help Shorewater make |
|---|---|
Explanations of what customers understood, with the material version retained | Revise unclear service or bill information before relying on the response. |
Connected affordability and acceptability answers, with relevant group distinctions | Investigate a plan objection, a payment burden or both. |
Reasons for preferences among feasible programs and their timing | Revisit the open investment choices without treating support as an engineering assessment. |
Unresolved questions and the evidence needed to address them | Commission the next technical, household or communication work. |
If Shorewater’s program is fixed, the brief should address an honest explanation, practical support or implementation. Do not offer a choice the company will not honor or describe the resulting answers as customer authorization for the plan.
When options remain, show how the evidence influenced them. The team may revise timing, seek another feasible package or investigate support. If it keeps the plan, explain why and identify concerns still needing attention. Customer research informs the wider decision; it does not replace it.
Use a complete package in a simulated comparison
At Sapien, we build simulated audiences grounded in purchase, behavioral and research data. Your customer evidence and earlier research can add context. Our team builds the audience, runs studies and helps interpret how different groups understand an offer, compare alternatives and explain their responses.
Shorewater’s interruption and sewer-overflow programs need verified service and bill information before a simulated audience can compare them. Follow-up questions to the same simulated audience can explore how the programs or their explanations are understood in particular household situations.
Keep measured household affordability, engineering feasibility and any required human engagement attached to the evidence able to establish them. Simulated responses can inform the next customer-research question; they do not demonstrate that real households can pay a future bill or approve a utility's investment plan.
One support score would leave Shorewater unsure whether to revisit the plan, bill or explanation. Bring feasible programs and verified bill paths to a Sapien discussion so the study can return separate answers about understanding, acceptance and reported bill difficulty. Keep relevant groups and reasons connected to each answer.
