Think local to support customers to reduce water use

As part of our Mind the Tap series, consultant Edward Mallam discusses the best ways to communicate water efficiency messages and help customers see the impact their actions can have.

A fundamental shift is needed in how water companies and their partners engage with customers and stakeholders to meet the challenging target of reducing per capita consumption (PCC) to 110 litres by 2050. Many consumers don’t realise water scarcity is an issue, a view compounded by the visible signs of water abundancy and waste – flooding and leakage.

Water companies already actively encourage customers to save water via metering, home efficiency checks, bill information and education programmes. There are also numerous communications campaigns aimed at customers and stakeholders, which tend to take a blanket approach such as “spend less time in the shower” or “turn off the tap whilst brushing your teeth”.

Whilst these campaigns have had some impact, it has been limited in changing long term customer behaviour.  Water companies and their partners need to improve engagement with customers to reduce water use, but how?

Focus: build campaigns at a community level utilising customer segmentation. To be effective, communication must be targeted to engage different audiences.

Enable: empower customers to make informed choices through ongoing conversations about the value of water.

Sustainable change: provide the ‘nudges’ customers need and regulation and legislation such as water labelling of white goods.

Engagement with customers and communities at a local level to educate and raise awareness of water scarcity is critical to encouraging behavioural change. Communication must be relevant to where customers live and where their water comes from.

To achieve this, organisations must:

• enable two-way engagement and dialogue across a range of channels/methods at a local level
• work with consumers and stakeholders to identify solutions to change long-term behaviour
• understand the make-up of communities – how do factors such as geography, age, social groups, ethnicity, culture impact water usage?
• Work with local and national partners, social influencers and advocates to communicate with customers in different ways and to reach a broader audience. Water companies and regulators may not be as trusted by consumers
• use social influence to model and drive long-term behaviour change.

Companies should make the most of multiple ways to engage with customers and stakeholders to reach as many people as possible

Focus groups

These enable direct interaction with customers and stakeholders and lead to genuine insight through face-to-face engagement with a range of people. Insight from these groups can inform campaigns by to make sure the messages are relevant and useful to customers.

Social media

Content should move away from broadcasting to enabling conversations with customers. Campaigns that are community focused as opposed to national give better chance for analysis of sentiment and reach – what do people respond positively or negatively to, and when is the best time to reach them.

Monitoring social media conversations locally, nationally and internationally can help identify keywords or other trends as they form that can be used to shape content and identify opportunities to engage.

Identifying and working with key influencers and advocates as well as publishing content across multiple platforms and accounts will maximise reach and tailor the content by local area.

Similarly, making the most of a range of platforms for distributing content – video, pictorial, written and interactive feedback mechanisms will help maximise the number of people who see the messages.

Community influencers and advocates

Word of mouth is one of the most powerful ways to build trust around the campaign. Strong relationships with key influencers and advocates will improve visibility.

Influencers create reach, spark interest, ignite conversations and are a strong catalyst for change if used in the right way.  Advocates extend the reach of your message by sharing it with their network. Look for people who are publicly engaged about water on LinkedIn or Twitter or actively tagging water related issues on Instagram. To cement positive relationships, you can provide them with early access to new releases or invite them to private events to discuss solutions to issues currently being tested.

Customer and stakeholder online panels

Establish a community of customers to engage with on a regular basis and use them as a sounding board to test messaging. Offer incentives for participation. Taking an online community offline is a powerful way to deepen relationships.

Stakeholder panels should be subject focused and enable engagement on issues of interest i.e. awareness of water scarcity, reducing PCC, abstraction, reservoirs and transfers.

Citizen assemblies

Bring together a group of people and provide them with accessible information so they can discuss issues and reach a conclusion about what they think should happen. Participants should demographically reflect the wider population. They give the public the time and opportunity to learn about and discuss a topic, make trade-offs and arrive at workable recommendations.

Stakeholder assemblies

Based on the principles of a citizen assembly but involving people or organisations who have an interest and are already informed. They enable participants to understand and debate the views of different stakeholders rather than just focusing on their own interests.

Surveys

Seek the views of a demographically representative sample of customers. They enable views on a broad range of subjects and reach a large audience.

In conclusion…

Changing behaviour is a significant task regardless of the issue, but we have seen ‘blanket’ communications aren’t doing the job. A localised approach to communicating and engaging with customers and stakeholders is needed. The context must be relevant to the audience so having a clear understanding of the customer base is essential to achieve this.

Edward Mallam is a management consultant specialising in stakeholder engagement and behavioural change. He has previously worked for Affinity Water in customer engagement.