Our Water-Saving Home Visits(opens in a new tab) are designed to provide practical, hands-on support to help customers reduce their water usage and protect their homes. During a free visit, a professional technician from Waterlink(opens in a new tab) (a branch of South East Water), assesses water fittings, installs water-saving devices and identifies and fixes hidden leaks, where possible.
To make the process as seamless as possible before widely launching to our customers, we initiated a staff pilot in Kent. This allowed us to gather honest feedback on the end-to-end customer journey, from the initial booking to the technician’s arrival and the follow up communications.
Our highlights
While we haven't yet launched a full promotional campaign to customers, it is already gaining momentum through organic interest and internal testing:
- Staff pilot engagement: Since launching the pilot at the end of February 2026, we’ve had 28 staff bookings.
- Organic interest: We’ve maintained a quiet presence on our website, allowing customers to book visits if they find the service organically. This has enabled us to continue completing visits and refining our internal processes in the meantime.
- Targeted outreach: We recently sent communications to vulnerable customers in the Herne Bay area, which is expected to drive a surge in bookings. In the first 24 hours, we had 15 bookings.
- Total visits: To date, we’ve completed 2,192 visits.
- Customer satisfaction: Feedback from our post-visit customer surveys has been overwhelmingly positive. Out of 42 completed surveys to date, 38 customers rated their experience a 10/10.
What we’ve learned
To understand why some staff members hadn't engaged with the pilot, we issued a low uptake survey. The feedback was valuable, highlighting several friction points in the original process:
- Availability barriers: Slots were restricted to Monday-Friday, 9.00am to 4.30pm, which is not suitable for most working people.
- Booking friction: The reliance on telephone calls rather than an email option, or even an automated digital system, was a deterrent.
- Lack of visual context: Without photos or videos of a real visit, staff and customers felt unsure of what the service actually involved.
How we’re improving
We are taking direct action based on these findings to make sure the wide-scale launch is a success:
- Increased flexibility: We’re meeting with technicians to discuss opening up more slots, including the potential for evening and weekend availability.
- Digital transformation: We’re working with our Digital Workplace Analyst to develop an automated booking system to replace manual phone calls.
- Visual storytelling: We’ve recently filmed and photographed real visits. This new content features our technicians and staff (who are also customers) explaining the process firsthand, which will be used to refresh the webpage and build trust.
- New call cards: We redesigned the call cards which technicians hand to the customer at the end of the visit. It lists the work completed (devices installed and leaks fixed). The back features a QR code with a link to a feedback form. So far, we’ve received 42 responses for this survey.
- Personalised communications: We’ve introduced automated, three-month follow-up emails. Using merge tags, these personalise the list of the exact devices and fixes each customer received. So far, we’ve received 55 responses for this follow-up survey.
Next steps
We’re still recruiting for our technician team. Once we’re at full capacity and our digital booking improvements are live, we’ll roll the Water-Saving Home Visits out widely, region by region.