Water and utilities market research by DJS Research

Over the last two decades our utilities team has worked closely with numerous companies across the UK, providing robust and actionable insight and supporting organisations through four price reviews and countless business as usual projects. We have also worked with the regulator Ofwat and the independent consumer statutory body Consumer Council for Water (CCW), conducting detailed qualitative and quantitative studies across a wide range of topics.

With years of sector experience between them, our researchers have a deep understanding of the utilities market and draw upon the latest innovations in research methodology and analysis to design bespoke solutions for our clients. From the ongoing optimisation of our annual surveys with household customers, such as the CCW Water Matters report, to ensure they remain fresh and fit for purpose, to exploring new ways to stimulate behaviour change in water usage, we seek to continuously enhance our approach to ensure our recommendations meet requirements. Our utilities research spans the full breadth of the sector and its many distinct audiences including household customers, future bill payers, business users and underrepresented groups.

Key areas we have specialised in over recent years include:

Business planning

Our experience in full business planning covers everything from identifying customer priorities, developing performance measures, understanding ODIs, Willingness to Pay (WtP) and acceptability and affordability research. In addition, we have extensive experience supporting the development and acceptability of Water Resource Management Plans (company and regional) and Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans. We look forward to supporting clients, new and old, with their PR29 customer and stakeholder engagement.

Customer vulnerability and affordability

We have extensive experience engaging customers in challenging or vulnerable circumstances, who may be considered hard to reach, including individuals with health and/or financial difficulties, the digitally disengaged and those in rural or more isolated areas. We also have a bespoke online panel, Different Perspectives that give this audience a voice. Our work with these groups transcends the water and utilities sector into medical and healthcare, the charity and not-for-profit sector and beyond. We have a proven track record conducting detailed research, with care and consideration, with patients, medical staff and groups supported by charitable organisations. The depth and diversity of our audience and project experience informs and enriches our work across all sectors.

Project examples which illustrate the breadth of our work with vulnerable audiences for the water industry include: customer needs analysis; post-incident research with bespoke creative outputs (including a 'lived experience' video, documenting real customer experiences to share with internal stakeholders); surveys to monitor awareness and performance of financial support packages and priority services registers; and studies into the acceptance and willingness to pay towards social tariffs (for over a dozen water companies). Our affordability report for CCW – ‘Water Worries’ – can be found in the public domain and viewed here.

A selection of research outputs for CCW

Changing customer behaviour

When asked, consumers have little trouble offering their self-declared reasons for why they will – or why they will not – use less water, save more energy or flush nothing that shouldn’t be flushed. However, the conscious part of our brain has not evolved sufficiently to be aware of many of the innate influences, and natural instincts, that drive our actions. Through behavioural deep dives using robust frameworks (including COM-B and the Transtheoretical) we help our clients unpick what really drives their customers’ behaviours and identify how these behaviours can be changed over time. Combined with big dollops of creative thinking to break free from the shackles of industry norms, we can design behavioural interventions backed up by robust evaluation to provide proof of behaviour change and impact. Find out more about our expertise in the field of behavioural science.

Brand and reputation tracking

We conduct brand tracking studies for clients across a host of different sectors including utilities. As well as designing and building tailored trackers from scratch, we are confident and comfortable inheriting and developing existing models; we don’t have an off-the-shelf brand tracking package, each project is bespoke and so are our solutions.

We believe the key to success for all our tracking studies lies in the on-boarding of internal stakeholders: we work closely with our clients to understand output requirements in detail from the start, including how results and insights will be disseminated, to ensure stakeholder needs and expectations are met.

In addition to brand trackers, we have also conducted ad hoc research to identify the key factors which impact upon sector, brand and company reputation and measures to help turn poor perceptions around.

Community engagement

Proactive community engagement has increased markedly across the utilities sector in recent years and we’ve found ourselves being asked more and more frequently to conduct research within local communities. Areas of focus have spanned the UK with a range of locations earmarked for resilience programmes, communications campaigns or financial support. Our work has included ethnographic and quantitative studies in specific geographical areas and our research has helped tailor and inform communications including customer consultations, social media campaigns, door-drops and working partnerships.

Working side by side with members of the local community, our outputs reflect local knowledge and nuance. Recent examples have included the recruitment of cohorts of ‘community champions’ (to ensure resources were being targeted in the most effective way) and engaging community Imams to help disseminate sewer misuse messages at local mosques.

Environmental research

More and more of our utilities research explores solutions which aim to enhance and improve our natural environment. These have included bioresources, sustainable drainage solutions, catchment management and water efficiency initiatives. We have explored some of these solutions, and the complexities of these proposals, in great depth with a wide range of customers. We have also supported numerous water companies with their climate change adaptation plans – head to our climate change and environmental market research page to read more about our experience in this field.

To find out more about our expertise in the water industry and wider utilities sector and how we can provide the actionable insight you need to meet your business objectives, contact our team today.

Client testimonial: Echo

"I approached half a dozen agencies for a proposal for a B2B market intelligence project. I found that DJS Research responded quickly to the brief, understood the objectives better than any agency and, once commissioned, sustained a good level of engagement and understanding. DJS Research met the objectives I had set and completed the project within a challenging timeframe. Moreover, Ali and Danny were able to add value and bring constructive ideas to the project which improved the quality of information uncovered, improved the success rate of interview recruitment and increased the business value of the final report."

Client testimonial: Severn Trent

"This was a VERY difficult project. Difficult topic, difficult timescales. But DJS Research pulled out all the stops to get a great result. We really do appreciate all your hard work – and the excellent insight delivered."

Client testimonial: Yorkshire Water

"We’ve worked with DJS Research for around a decade now as one of our trusted customer research suppliers. More recently, they have also become our ‘go-to’ for our videography needs since they a pleasure to work with, represent good value and their video outputs are fantastic. They have created a range of animated and filmed videos for us over the past year, from helping us to clearly explain and engage customers in our business plan to helping bring to life the real voices and experiences of our customers. DJS Research always have an excellent grasp of our objectives and vision, doing a great job of bringing our ideas and aims together in a really creative and visually appealing way. We look forward to working with DJS Research on more videography work in the near future!"

Client testimonial: ELGA LabWater

"We have been highly impressed with the market research project that DJS Research carried out for our company. Market research plays an integral part in our future business growth and DJS Research delivered and presented the sort of information we can use to help achieve this. We would definitely use this company again and would have no hesitation in recommending their services."

Client testimonial: United Utilities

"We were able to gain valuable customer feedback to our business challenge with a very prompt turn-around from brief to delivery. The customer focus group study was provided to brief, on time and under budget and with very commendable professionalism. I very much appreciate the work that Ali Sims and team have provided to us, and have no hesitation in stating that I looking to working together some time soon."

Client testimonial:

"A consistently great service is always provided by DJS Research. They are always pleasant and professional to work with, giving us confidence in their ability to manage every project in an optimal way. Proposals are always innovate, and outputs are well designed, interesting, and accurate. We find that their qualitative work in particular, is very hard to beat and always feel privileged to work with them. They have earned respect across our whole business with the quality of their research. Every time we commission DJS Research to do a study, we feel confident that the research is in the right hands. Throughout our partnership, DJS Research have gained our trust, producing high quality research that is regularly used across the business. We also don't hesitate to recommend DJS Research to other teams, and it's their professionalism and approachability that has earned them respect across our departments.This project was a new direction for us, and we were aware of the professional, sensitive and discrete handling that would be needed to understand our most vulnerable customers. From start to finish, Ali gave us confidence that the project was being managed perfectly and the output was beyond what we expected – garnering interest across the business. The clear and frequent communications, and the additional effort made to supply us with a very handy, (and well-designed), summary document have been greatly appreciated. We have absolutely no criticism of the DJS Research team, they have been fantastic."

Client testimonial:

"The team at DJS Research were a pleasure to work with and the project ran exactly to plan, and provided great insight into a substantial piece of work we are doing to improve the customer experience. We'll be able to make some sound recommendations and business decisions based on the insight, ensuring we're prioritising and investing in initiatives that our customer value most. I would most definitely recommend them and look forward to working with them again in the future."

Client testimonial: Water client

Client testimonial: Severn Trent

"It’s been an absolute pleasure working with you both (Alex McCluckie and Ali Sims) on this project. You clearly understood our (lengthy!) brief, you have an in depth understanding of our industry and gave us the insight and actionable recommendations we need. Thank you!"

Client testimonial: United Utilities

"DJS Research took the time to understand our research requirements and responded with a professional proposal that added value to our research objectives and was also very good value for money. The whole project ran smoothly with no delays and was professionally managed throughout. I would be happy to use DJS Research for any future studies and would recommend them to others."

Client testimonial: Yorkshire Water

"This was a very challenging project given the nature of the research and the timescales set by the industry regulator. The DJS Research team did a fantastic job in ensuring that the qualitative stage was delivered on time complete with a detailed final report."

Client testimonial: United Utilities

"DJS Research has a good understanding of my business area and the requirements for this research. They are friendly, professional and provide high quality analysis."

Client testimonial: United Utilities

"Very accommodating, efficient and reliable in responding to our requests. Particularly impressed with the efforts to provide a draft report of the findings within a very short timeframe. Perfectly happy with the service provided!"

Client testimonial: Severn Trent

"DJS Research did a great job, as always. It was a complex brief – and a difficult topic to explore with respondents – but they did a fantastic job. The discussion guides, debrief and report were all top quality."

Explore our testimonials archive

Our news:
When everyone is busy being objectively similar, try cultivating your subjective difference...

The Covid-19 backdrop against which I am writing is, of course, impossible to ignore and its exact ramifications, impossible to predict. Despite this, I was struck by Suzanne Heneghan’s article in Utility Week rallying the sector to not lose sight of its future goals in the current turmoil and thought, maybe some less pandemic-focused views may be welcomed. So, it is with an eye to the future that I would like to pose an evolutionary step in how we cultivate value for consumers, beginning with a rather bold statement; The water industry has become fixated on certain metrics, largely due to legacy, and as a result has become blinded to novel (yet equally important) areas that could act as a proverbial rocket to the industry’s proverbial backside. With a metaphor as colourful as that, it’s best I explain… As someone who has carried out many tracking studies for water companies and consumer bodies alike, I have seen time and again the value that such exercises can hold. Providing a continuous, diagnostic tool that stakeholders can use to benchmark, monitor and identify issues, whilst simultaneously observing the fruits of their hard work starting to bear over time, really is a useful and rewarding process. That being said, as more and more customer satisfaction and perception pieces have come and gone from my desk over the last decade, I have been left wondering whether the rate of evolution in the types of questions that we ask has been commensurate with the amount of time that has passed. Monopolised by mundane metrics? Over the last few years, the water industry – for all its naysayers – has been providing a service that in a number of areas at least, has been performing pretty well. To illustrate the point, let’s take a look at some data from CCW’s Water Matters report. Looking at the below chart it is pretty clear that at an industry-wide level, public perceptions of certain areas of service such as the reliability of supply or around the colour and appearance of tap water have made for some rather pleasant reading. What’s more, when viewed at an individual company level, there are similarly a number of areas and companies that illustrate a large degree of (high performance) clustering at the top: The point here is that whilst it is absolutely key to track perceptions in these areas, I believe that our time has become monopolised by them. Now, I have had conversations with many of my client-side industry peers and all have made clear the opinion that such a traditional focus is something to be commended because it provides a basis on which a comprehensive overview can be gained; an overview which is still unquestionably useful to various industry stakeholders (and one which, to be clear, I am in complete agreement with). Indeed, when I have been pushing this point, my goal hasn’t ever been to promote the need to ‘uber-ise’ the metrics so frequently reached for, but to offer a means of supplementing them. It is my view that one often overlooked problem with our current arsenal of oft-deployed metrics, is that they actively discourage variety and they do so by forcing companies to chase the same goal in the same way(s). If the industry is to evolve in this post-PR19 era, one which itself saw an unprecedented step-change in customer engagement, then I believe we need to embrace other areas that are capable of broadening the industry’s understanding of what is feeding into consumers’ perceptions of value. To lay down my current view on this and to demonstrate why there is plenty more to explore in our conception of value, it’s best we take a trip to Central Europe – Austria to be precise… Expanding our horizons… There is a school of thought, which emanated from the Austrian School of economics, that posits that value at its heart is fundamentally subjective [1]. That sentence bears a second reading because when conceptualised in this manner, the value that a water company can bring can be as different to Mr Smith at number 19 as it is to Mrs Doe next door. What this means is that traditionally held notions of consumer value have by and large been calculated after consumers have been placed into the ‘shackles’ of numerous PR19-surveys that were, until recently, a key fixture of the industry’s customer engagement activities; surveys that have, at their core, been preoccupied with the more objectively defined attributes we examined earlier in the article. Think of it like this… Imagine you are dining at a five-star restaurant. The food is the best in the land! Mouth-watering dishes served with a smile. It is the definition of culinary perfection. …Only one problem – the floor is covered in human excrement! How would you increase the value that this restaurant is able to give its customers? Now, if value is subjective then it follows that there is no healthy distinction to be made between the value you create by creating the Michelin starred food and the value you create by cleaning the floor. One of them creates that which we think we're paying for (the delicious food, in this case) whilst the other creates the setting in which the product can actually be enjoyed. The implication being that neither one should be granted priority status over the other [2]. Think about that for a second. If value is conceptualised as subjective then the value that companies are creating by providing fresh, clean drinking water and a reliable supply etc., in other words the traditionally held aspects making up 'core service', are only part of the equation – and they are by far not the only things that do (or I believe, should!) count. Imagine the world of possibilities that adopting this conception not only opens up, but actively encourages in the name of value creating entrepreneurialism! The Social Contract agenda recently espoused by Ofwat (see here for a brief overview) certainly chimes well with such a conception. Seen in this light, companies could really look to capitalise and differentiate themselves all whilst boosting the industry’s net benefits to society which (according to Ofwat at least) are currently not anywhere near as good as they could be, or where they need to be. It is a more subjective conception of value then, that provides the sector with an opportunity to experiment and evolve. Experiment that is, with activities, initiatives and engagement strategies that may be totally out of their norm and deliver unforgettable experiences that create even greater levels of perceived value and in the C-MeX era, sharpen their competitive edge. Failure to at least heed this warning will likely lead to a relationship with the regulator that wouldn’t be welcomed in any boardroom and even worse, a relationship with consumers that is, through a wanton lack of action, arguably negligent. References: [1] See Shotton, R. (2018). The Choice Factory. [2] Thanks to R. Sutherland for the (rather colourful) example.

Read the full article

Water market research

Case study:
United Utilities

Case study:
United Utilities

Case study:
Echo

Case study:
United Utilities

Case study:
United Utilities

Some of the clients we’ve worked with in the water sector