To help us track our customer satisfaction we have developed six attitudinal segments. This approach means we go beyond understanding what the average customer thinks of us to having far greater insight into their varying views and priorities.
Each year we contact 2,400 customers at random to understand, from your point of view, what we’re doing well and where we can improve, reacting to comments made on a variety of subjects.
Segmented satisfaction of household customers (scroll down for results)
Each year we survey customers for each of our six customer attitudinal segments below to understand whether they consider the:
- Appearance of their tap water to be acceptable
- Taste and odour of their water to be acceptable
- Level of leakage to be acceptable
- Direct interaction they’ve had with us to be positive
- Water supply they receive has sufficient pressure
- Frequency and duration of supply interruptions to be acceptable
- Frequency of water use restrictions to be acceptable
Surveying our customers in this way is an innovative new approach for us and the industry too and one where we have also set ourselves stretching targets.
Although this is a new measure for the 2020 to 2025 period, we have surveyed customer segments previously and the targets across all these measures were set following our performance between July 2017 and March 2018. From that position we have built into the targets improvement across all measures.
How have we performed?
The results of each of the six segments are shown below.
Having tracked our key questions on which the attitudinal segment scoring is based, we recognised there was very little upward movement in score despite the improvements we felt we were making in performance.
When we set these targets back in 2019, we also set ourselves the challenge to increase them over the five years to 2025. Due to the changing landscape this is a considerable challenge to achieve. Despite this, we still set ourselves high ambitions to focus on lifting customer scores in all these areas to ensure our continued focus on improving.
During 2024/25 we fell short of our target across all six segments. This is a continued reflection on a reduction in customer satisfaction across all sectors according to the UK Customer Services Index. We do, however, continue to see improvements in other areas of our customer satisfaction measures.
We continue to build upon our strong Customer Satisfaction improvement programme, which includes promoting our corporate social responsibility and improving brand awareness, digital presence, self-serve transactions as well as implementing an omni-channel approach.
We have seen other strong improvement indicators such as achieving our re-accreditation of the BS ISO 22458 Inclusive Service Kitemark in recognition of our commitment to supporting vulnerable customers.
Mindful Optimists
Within the Mindful Optimists segment, we have a target score of 4.5 out of five.
At the end of the year, we scored 3.7 out of five, 0.8 below our target.
This customer segment’s overall score for 2024/25 remained as it was in 2023/24, but saw a significant improvement in considering the frequency of water use restrictions to be acceptable.
Global Advocates
With the Global Advocates segment, we also had a target score of 4.5 out of five.
Our end-of-year performance score achieved 3.9 out of five, consistent with last year.
This segment’s satisfaction with the appearance of their water saw a slight downturn from last year, down 0.1 to 4.4. Considering the appearance of their water to be acceptable did however see a significant improvement year-over-year, growing to 2.89, but remains short of target.
Careful neighbours
Within the Careful Neighbours segment, we again had a target score of 4.5 out of five.
At the end of the year, we achieved 4.1 out of five, which was the highest score of any segment, as well as the most significant year-over-year improvement.
This segment slightly improved across all seven key questions and achieved rounded target performance levels across three of the seven key questions; their water supply being of sufficient pressure, the frequency and duration of interruptions and the appearance of their water, which again achieved the highest score of any segment and key question at 4.6.
Just me and mine
Within the Just Me and Mine segment, we had a target score of 4.5 out of five.
In 2024/25, these customers scored 3.9 out of five, up 0.1 from last year.
This segment has seen a year-on-year improvement in satisfaction in five of the seven key questions, most significantly, that they consider the frequency of water use restrictions to be acceptable. The key questions relating to pressure and appearance are the only service elements where the Just Me and Mine segment felt less satisfied.
Busy juggler
Within the Busy Juggler segment, we had a target score of 4.5 out of five.
In 2024/25, these customers scored 4.0 out of five, which was up 0.1 from last year.
This segment also achieved year-over-year improvements across five of the seven key questions, again most significantly, that they consider the frequency of water use restrictions to be acceptable. The key questions relating to interruptions and leakage are the only service elements where they felt less satisfied.
Living for today
Within the Living for Today segment, we had a target score of 4.5 out of five.
In 2024/25, these customers scored 3.7 out of five, the same as in 2023/24.
This segment experienced slight downturns across five of the seven key questions, most significantly that they ‘consider the appearance of their water to be acceptable’, which dropped 0.13 points. Of the two questions to improve, ‘considering the frequency of water use restrictions to be acceptable’ improved by 0.16 from 2023/24.
