Non-Household Customer Insight Survey

From 1 April 2017, about 1.2 million eligible non-household customers (businesses, charities and public sector) whose business is wholly or mainly in England have been able to choose who supplies their water and wastewater (also known as 'sewerage') retail services. Retail services include things like water meter reading and customer services. There are over 20 active retailers in the market, and nearly 20,000 switches have already taken place. Details on retailers can be found here. Details on wholesalers can be found here.

The new market is one of the largest retail water markets in the world, delivering an estimated £200 million of overall benefits to customers and the UK economy. Being able to switch water and wastewater retailer means that business customers are able to negotiate the best package that suits their needs. Or by successfully applying for a licence, business customers can also choose to supply themselves with retail services.

We expect that the most effective way to carry out the survey will be through CATI (computer assisted telephone interviewing) but we are open to exploring different solutions if they will achieve our aims whilst securing best value for money.

We also want to explore with the Supplier the most appropriate way to secure meaningful results, where practical, against the customer segments that we are interested in and look to the Supplier to advise on suitable sample sizes, both overall and for individual segments. For the purposes of responding to this tender, suppliers should quote on the basis of 2,000 interviews per wave.

We intend to carry out two waves of surveying. The first should take place as early as possible (ideally early-mid July 2017 before the onset of the main summer holidays), so that we can get an initial sense of customers' views and establish a baseline, with the second taking place later in the year, around January 2018, so that we can get both a picture of customers' experiences in the first year of market opening and some sense of trends over time.