Customer Experience Management for Water Utilities

Peter Prevos

Description

Customer Experience Management for Water Utilities presents a practical framework for water utilities to become more focussed on their customers. This framework is founded on Service-Dominant Logic, a contemporary theory of marketing that explains value creation as a process of co-creation between the customer and the service provider. Standard models for marketing do not apply to monopolistic water utilities without modification. The first two chapters develop a marketing mix tailored to water utilities to assist them with providing customer-centric services. The water utility marketing mix includes the value proposition, internal marketing, service quality and customer relationships. he book discusses the four dimensions of the marketing mix. Chapter three presents a template for developing value propositions to assist water utilities in positioning their service. This model is based on the needs and wants of individual customer segments and the type of service. Chapter four discusses internal marketing, activities designed to improve the way utilities add value for customers. This chapter also analyses potential tensions between engineering and science-oriented employees and proposes methods to resolve these tensions. The final chapters describe customer relationships from both a theoretical and practical perspective. The customer experience is a complex phenomenon that is difficult to quantify. The book provides a method to measure the experience of the customer, based on service quality theory and psychometric statistics. Customer Experience Management for Water Utilities is one of the first books that discusses urban water supply from a marketing perspective. This perspective provides a unique insight into an industry which is often dominated by technological concerns. This book is a valuable resource for Water Utility Managers and Regulators, as well as for Marketing Consultants seeking to assist water utilities to become more customer focussed.

Sujets

• Marketing et communication
• Customer service
• Environmental science

Informations

• Publié par: IWA Publishing
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781780408675
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT PETER PREVOS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT FOR WATER UTILITIES FOR WATER UTILITIES MARKETING URBAN WATER SUPPLY

PETER PREVOS

A valuable resource for Water Utility Managers and Regulators, Marketing Consultants and Scholars

Customer Experience Management for Water Utilities

Customer Experience Management for Water Utilities Marketing Urban Water Supply

Peter Prevos

Published by

First published 2018  c 2018 IWA Publishing

IWA Publishing Alliance House 12 Caxton Street London SW1H 0QS, UK Telephone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail] Web: www.iwapublishing.com

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1998), no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, or, in the case of photographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licenses issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency in the UK, or in accordance with the terms of licenses issued by the appropriate reproduction rights organization outside the UK. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the terms stated here should be sent to IWA Publishing at the address printed above.

The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for errors or omissions that may be made.

Disclaimer The information provided and the opinions given in this publication are not necessarily those of IWA Publishing and should not be acted upon without independent consideration and professional advice. IWA Publishing and the Authors will not accept responsibility for any loss or damage suffered by any person acting or refraining from acting upon any material contained in this publication.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781780408668 (Paperback) ISBN: 9781780408675 (eBook) ISBN: 9781780408897 (ePub)

Cover image: www.istockphoto.com

Contents

List of Figures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . List of Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Chapter 1 Introduction to water utility marketing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Marketing Theory and Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.1 Definitions of marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.2 Servicedominant logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Water Utilities as Public Service Providers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 Water as a public good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.2 Natural monopolies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.3 Ownership models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.4 Public service characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Water Utility Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.1 Water utility marketing literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.1 Sanitation services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.2 Scope of this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.3 The water utility marketing mix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ix xi xiii xv xix xxi

1 3 4 5 9 10 11 13 13 15 16 17 21 21 22 22

vi

1.4.4 1.4.5 1.4.6 1.4.7 1.4.8

Customer Experience Management for Water Utilities

The value proposition of tap water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Internal marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Measuring the customer experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Customer relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Implementing water utility marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Chapter 2 A marketing mix for water utilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 The Marketing Mix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Water Utilities as Service Providers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Tap water as a service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Industry structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Classification of Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Tangibility and intangibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 Service factories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.3 Classifying water utility services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Water Utility Discourse Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 Research method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.2 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 The Water Utility Marketing Mix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.1 Value proposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.2 Internal marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.3 Customer relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.4 Service quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Chapter 3 The value proposition of tap water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Value Propositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 The Anthropology of Water Consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Water consumers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Water utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Water Utility Advocates and Regulators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 Employee attitudes and behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Consumer experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Crafting Value Propositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.1 Engineering and social science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.2 The value proposition canvas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.3 The customer profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.4 The service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.5 Completing and implementing value propositions . . . . . .

23 23 24 24 25

27 28 29 31 32 36 37 38 38 40 40 43 46 47 48 49 50

53 55 57 58 62 65 66 67 69 69 70 71 73 74

Contents

Chapter 4 Internal marketing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Customer Focus in Water Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Professional Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Financial hardship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.2 Service bureaucracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.3 Technical orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Engineering–Marketing Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Engineers and marketers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Sources of conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.3 Engineers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.4 Marketers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Engineers and Marketers in Water Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.1 Organisational attitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.2 Empirical research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4.3 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Implementing Internal Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5.1 Using taste testing as internal marketing . . . . . . . . . . . .

vii

77 79 82 82 83 84 85 86 86 88 89 90 92 92 96 97 98

Chapter 5 Customer relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 5.1 Understanding Customers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 5.1.1 Valuecreation networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 5.1.2 Customer labelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 5.1.3 Customer segments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 5.1.4 Consumer involvement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 5.2 Managing the Customer Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 5.2.1 Process mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 5.2.2 Managing complaints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 5.2.3 Promoting the value proposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 5.3 The Invisible Water Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 5.3.1 Time price of water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 5.3.2 Customer relationships and invisibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Chapter 6 Measuring the customer experience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 6.1 Defining Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 6.1.1 Quality, satisfaction and value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 6.1.2 Quality and servicedominant logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 6.1.3 Perspectives of servicedominant quality . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 6.1.4 Scope of servicedominant quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

viii

Customer Experience Management for Water Utilities

6.1.5 Measuring servicedominant quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 6.2 S ERV A QUA : A Service Quality Instrument for Water Utilities . . . . 131 6.2.1 Core and supplementary services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 6.2.2 Technical quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 6.2.3 Functional quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 6.2.4 S ERV A QUA survey instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 6.3 Validation of the S ERV A QUA Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 6.3.1 Quantitative data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 6.3.2 Qualitative data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 6.3.3 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 6.4 Reporting Intrinsic and Extrinsic Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 6.4.1 Water system performance index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Chapter 7 Implementing water utility marketing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 7.1 Water Utility Marketing Synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 7.1.1 Marketing mix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 7.1.2 Value proposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 7.1.3 Internal marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 7.1.4 Service quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 7.1.5 Customer relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 7.2 Water Utility Marketing Paradoxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 7.2.1 Paradox of value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 7.2.2 Water quality paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 7.2.3 Involvement paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 7.2.4 Invisibility paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 7.2.5 Marketing waste water services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 7.3 Further Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Appendix A: IWA Journal Abstract List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .183

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3 Figure 2.4 Figure 2.5 Figure 2.6 Figure 2.7

Figure 2.8 Figure 2.9 Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2 Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2 Figure 4.3 Figure 5.1

Classification of goods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Public services continuum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Water utility supply chain model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Five forces model for the water utility industry . . . . . . . . 36 The tangibility continuum and customer evaluation . . . . . 37 Service classification model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Example of a semantic network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 IWA journal search results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Wordcloud of the IWA abstract contents, excluding stopwords and the search criteria (Fifty most common words) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Communities of discourse IWA journals . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Water utility marketing mix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Value propositions in the value chain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Value proposition model for water utilities . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Marketing triangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Customer experience salient parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Employee respondent characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Simplified value creation network for water utilities . . . . . 104