Putting the Customer First

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Knowing Your Customer
  What information does the practitioner need to know?
  How does the practitioner get this information?
Building Awareness
  What should the practitioner do?
Responding to Demand
  How to assess demand?
Assessing Satisfaction
  How to improve customer satisfaction?

 
KNOWING YOUR CUSTOMER

Knowing the customer is important in the context of serving the poor as they have different interests, abilities, circumstances, opportunities and demands than other customers receiving conventional services. The service options, payment and management systems and investment requirements can be determined more effectively based on knowledge of the target group of low-income communities.

Utilities lack information about the specific situation of low-income communities and local authorities also have little information as these settlements are often unplanned and unmapped. Uncoordinated action by service providers such as water, sanitation, health, electricity, roads may result in much duplication of effort and incompatible databases.

The complexity and heterogeneity of low-income communities should not be underplayed and more than one strategy may be required to meet the service delivery needs.

 

What information does the practitioner need to know?

The utility is usually assigned responsibility to provide services to all of the people in a specified area. This may be difficult to plan or assess without basic information and this is particularly true for the low-income community who are the community with the lowest standard and level of service.

Objective:
Describe the extent and nature of the problem surrounding water and sanitation services for the low-income urban areas.

Actions:

  • What is the physical distribution of low-income communities or areas and how many people reside in these areas?
  • What is the layout of each community in relation to physical infrastructure such as roads?
  • How do they get water now, the level of service; the cost, payment and management system?
  • What sanitation services are in the community, how are these managed and paid for?
  • What services does the community want and are willing to pay for?

Duplication of surveys with overlapping but different data sets results from lack of coordination between different planning and service agents such as water, roads, housing, electricity and others.

Tools:

  • Data collection: formats, or questions in more detail
 
How does the practitioner get this information?

Objective:
Determine the best means to find basic information, consider both practitioner as well as community involvement.

Actions:
Low-income communities are often informal and unplanned, scattered and ill defined. This means that detailed plans are often unavailable from the local authority. However the local authority is obviously the first source to check. Other service providers may have carried out surveys (health, electricity, roads, and municipality) which may be available to avoid duplication of effort.
Is there a need to build capacity in the utility to collect this information or can we outsource the collection of the information? NGOs may be able to assist in surveys or with information.

Tools:

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BUILDING AWARENESS

Low-income communities are often poorly organised and with no point of contact with the utility to be able to discuss service needs. The right of these community groups to service is often questioned and the unstable or illegal status of the people reduces their confidence to demand services. Communities may be unaware of their right to a basic level of service or the options that may be available to improve the service they currently have. The lack of knowledge on hygiene or sanitation affects their willingness to pay for services and to maintain the infrastructure.

What should the practitioner do?

Communication routes between the utility and the community are very important and an organised community can make the work substantially easier. Organised communities benefit entry of many sectors providing basic services or welfare assistance and so collaboration with these organisations may ease the burden on the utility.

  

Comment:
Involve Public and Media in Building Awareness

Strategies must involve the public and have them participate in planning, implementation, and monitoring. More often than not the public is not engaged meaningfully and when projects fail they are blamed, assuming that the public is not appreciative. Let the people feel ownership by getting involved fully.

It is also necessary to involve the media - both print and electronic - to reach the urban poor and all partners. An ill-informed media is not helpful. Being proactive in utilizing the media skills helps to inform the public and win their support.

It is amazing how some of the problems are only perceived problems due to a lack of awareness.

Contributor: Thebe A Pule, WHO/AFRO

  

Objectives:

  • Ensure the capacity in the utility to engage with the low income community,
  • Develop routes for communicating effectively with the community, and
  • Raise awareness within the community of the benefits of safe water, sanitation and good hygiene practices.

Actions:

a) The utility has to reassess its policy and approach to dealing with the unserved and especially the low income or informal settlements. This is often the most important first step and may be followed by the creation of a separate unit but will require the integration of the approach into the business plan, work plan and priorities of the utility.

  • Ensure that the utility has the capacity and commitment to enter into a programme of dealing with low income communities, train staff in participatory techniques, engage staff with social skills, allocate resources and develop a work plan for dealing with services to low income communities.
  • Develop collaboration mechanisms with other agencies working in the community such as local authority, NGOs, health and the private sector.

b) There are various options for reaching the community and this may be carried out by the utility or by another agency such as an NGO. The need to link water, sanitation and hygiene suggests that a combined strategy with other agencies will be more efficient and successful. In all cases it is most efficient to identify and work through a legitimate, representative body whose leadership acts as the entry point for working with the low-income community. In some cases these structures exist but may need strengthening and assistance to become more democratic. In other cases they may need to be created.

  • Identify community organisation structures and use these as the entry point for community consultations (and “getting to know your customer”),
  • Strengthen the governance of these structures if necessary, either directly or working through other community support institutions such as the local authority or NGOs.

c) Awareness will need to be built on a range of water issues such as service level, management, pricing; on sanitation issues such as technology, financing, maintenance; and on hygiene issues such as sanitation, handwashing, environmental sanitation. There is never enough awareness raising and there are always new leaders being appointed who should be briefed to forestall any problems they may create for the utility. Awareness raising should not be limited to the community and its leaders but may also be targeted at the local authority, collaborating agencies, teachers and other civic groups.

  • Establish a programme of capacity building and awareness creation for target community leaders (teachers, health workers, artisans, community leaders) about water and sanitation services. The information may be similar but with groups such as teachers the focus may be more on the promotion of materials to be used in school curricula,
  • Establish a process of information support to communities to raise awareness about water and sanitation services and hygiene. Programmes may be carried out by community groups themselves (drama, health clubs), by other agencies such as environmental health staff, NGOs or by special trained staff of the utility.

Tools:

  • Participatory techniques
  • Sample curricula for building capacity with partner organisations and community leaders
  • Sample school curricula
  • Sample promotional materials
  • Sample constitution for consumer organisation;
  • Curriculum on governance of community organisations

See also Case Examples: Community Organisations, Community awareness programmes 'Resident Development Committees'  

  

Case Example:
Importance of Community Involvement in Sewerage Design
Innovative Use of Sewage Effluent

Tijuana, Mexico

I am currently working with a community in a peri-urban settlement in Tijuana, Mexico. They have tap water provided by the city but no sanitation. A committee of women from the 'colonia' (community) contacted me about possible solutions. They are already paying for marginal latrines and cesspools and they figured out that with about the same money they are paying today they should be able to provide maintenance to a system once it is in place.
Planned is a simplified sewerage system connecting 17 homes in a block, a septic tank (1 1/2-day retention) with an effluent vault filter and a trickling filter for secondary treatment. They are trying to figure out what to do with the effluent, exploring the possibility of: a) using the effluent for irrigation purposes for trees in a small unoccupied lot; b) selling the effluent to a neighboring ranch for agricultural purposes and with that money pay the maintenance expenses; or c) sell part of the effluent to the rancher in exchange for a plot of land to create a small community park.

The users are totally involved in the process; it is their project. In essence they make the decisions, and they plan to provide sweat equity for the project and cover the full maintenance costs. Nobody understands their problems better than they do; therefore only they can decide how much money and time to invest in the solution of their problem. The outsider's role is as a technical advisor. Once the community decides where to go, the advisor explains each option with its costs and benefits, advantages and disadvantages.

Contributor: Alberto Pombo
apombophd@aol.com

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RESPONDING TO DEMAND

Utilities rarely assess demand for services acting on the assumption that everyone is the average consumer and the same solution is appropriate for everyone. Low-income communities are the worst served sector in urban areas and a major contributory factor in this is the lack of solutions which meet the needs and requirements of this group. Housing, road networks, employment and income structures differ markedly in this group from other communities in urban areas and within the low income community there is marked heterogeneity. A challenge for utilities to be able to provide services to the low-income group is to understand the demand and match the solutions to the demand.

How to assess demand?

Demand can best be assessed from consultation with the community. Knowing basic information about the low-income group is a first step to planning how to enter the dialogue. Having created awareness within the community about water and sanitation and demonstrated the accessibility of the utility and its willingness to listen it becomes possible to consult further on demand.

Objective:
Receive information on the preferred service levels, payment and management systems for services and b) obtain consensus and commitment to options and actions proposed.

Actions:
a) Participatory tools are the most appropriate means to engage the community in self-assessment and facilitate consultation. Aspects to be examined have to start from where the community is now, existing technology and management and payment. Frank discussions of these can give rise to discussions on how they can be improved and the kind of service the community may desire and is willing to pay for.

  • Assist the community to engage in debate about existing water and sanitation services and how they can be improved;
  • Discuss the implications of different service and management options in terms of accessibility and cost;

b) The utility has a major responsibility to present adequate information to the community on the options, which may be used to address their demands for service. The utility should be prepared with information on costs, management options, and payment systems and to explain pricing policy. Where possible the utility should be prepared to entertain concerns of the community and adapt the options as this may have a major impact on the success and sustainability of the service.

  • Use the outputs from the consultations to plan for improving the services for the low income communities,
  • Engage in consensus building to finalise the plan and gain community commitment and support.

Tools:

See also Case Examples: Community Role in Planning 

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ASSESSING SATISFACTION

Consumers generally have little access to information on the services being provided by the utility in terms of water quality, pricing policy, service level decisions, and income from water. Customers from low-income areas also have more difficulty in accessing customer complaint services due to the lack of telephones, accessibility and the lack of recognition as customers when they use a community service.
Utilities themselves rarely disaggregate information on low-income communities to assess performance, problems and identify solutions. The lack of targets for improvement of coverage and service levels for low-income communities makes progress impossible to assess.

How to improve customer satisfaction?

The most important way of improving customer satisfaction is to respond to customer demands in a timely manner and to keep them informed, not only of the situation and progress but also of the problems. To a large degree, the provision of monitoring information to consumers, as well as to regulators, satisfies the most important needs for information. Low income communities, being the worst served, have a special need to be kept appraised of the situation both for accountability of the utility and maintaining commitment of the community.

Objective:
Keep the customer satisfied by responding to queries and complaints in a timely manner and providing them with regular information on service performance.

Actions:

  • For low income areas use consumer associations or community organisations as a route for receiving complaints and regular reporting of monitoring information from the utility;
  • The regulator should require the utility to release performance information to the public (water quality, performance, profits) on a regular basis;
  • Utilities should create a data management system, which allows isolation of information from low-income communities. This may then be used by the utility in planning and performance appraisal but also to allow specific information to be provided to low income communities;
  • Periodic assessment of progress in addressing the needs of low income communities (either done in-house or out-sourced) provides valuable monitoring information for the customers as well as the regulator and the utility.

Tools:

  • WUP utility monitoring indicators
  • Sample utility reporting requirements from the regulator
  • Sample survey data collection format and results

See also Case Examples: Utility information sharing with the community

 

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