Customer Research and Engagement Framework

Tender description

The provision of water and wastewater services in England and Wales is a regulated business, and a number of organisations including the economic industry regulator, Ofwat, oversee our activities. Every five years we present a business plan to Ofwat detailing the prices we wish to charge our customers for the services that our customers want us to provide. Customers are at the heart of everything we do and every decision we make. Our plans are co-created with our customers, and other stakeholders, through a robust programme of customer engagement, research and participation. We strive to ensure that our customer research and engagement is leading both within the water industry and compared to other sectors. We are currently working towards the price review that will take place in 2024 (PR24) and require framework partners to provide customer research and engagement, and supporting consultancy services. We will undertake both qualitative and quantitative research to understand our customers' priorities and the value they place on our services. This includes making decisions on the level of services customers can expect to receive and the investment we will make. Alongside this, we will require other professional services to consult on the use of the information we obtain from research to build suitable models from which we can devise cost effective plans. Lot 1: The provision of water and wastewater services in England and Wales is a regulated business, and a number of organisations including the economic industry regulator, Ofwat, oversee our activities. Every five years we present a business plan to Ofwat detailing the prices we wish to charge our customers for the services that our customers want us to provide. Customers are at the heart of everything we do and every decision we make. Our plans are co-created with our customers, and other stakeholders, through a robust programme of customer engagement, research and participation. We strive to ensure that our customer research and engagement is leading both within the water industry and compared to other sectors. We are currently working towards the price review that will take place in 2024 (PR24) and require framework partners to provide customer research and engagement, and supporting consultancy services. We will undertake both qualitative and quantitative research to understand our customers' priorities and the value they place on our services. This includes making decisions on the level of services customers can expect to receive and the investment we will make. Alongside this, we will require other professional services to consult on the use of the information we obtain from research to build suitable models from which we can devise cost effective plans. We require partners, with excellent professional experience, who can demonstrate a sound understanding of: - A wide range of customer research methodologies including Citizens Assessment/Jury - A broad range of economic research methodologies - An in-depth understanding of behavioural economics - The current regulatory landscape including Ofwat guidance - Willingness to Pay and Triangulation methods - Cost benefit modelling - Our business and the industry in which we operate - Innovative practice towards economic research and other customer engagement - How to make complex information understandable for customers - How to engage with customers and gain meaningful insight in COVID safe ways We welcome submissions from individual companies or consortiums of experts. If you are part of a consortium, please indicate who the lead organisation is. We want to deliver a robust and innovative research and engagement programme so that our plan reflects our customer priorities and willingness to pay for services. Our research and engagement must stand up to robust scrutiny by our Executive Leadership Team, Board and regulators. We will also engage with the Water Forum, (NWL's Customer Challenge Group). Members of the Water Forum will challenge our research methods, the robustness of the research and engagement and the interpretation of any results. The Water Forum will ensure that our plans adequately reflect the results of the engagement. Objectives We need to undertake an innovative and leading programme of research and engagement, to consider the following questions: - What do our customers and stakeholders believe are the most important areas of service provided by NW and ESW? - What improvements, if any, would our customers and stakeholders like to see to these services and what are they willing to pay for improvement to these services? - Are the service improvements and WTP the same as those determined by the regulator? - How would our customers and stakeholders like to see us incentivised or penalised for our performance against our service commitments? - Vulnerable customer insights - as a rule of thumb in PR19 we worked to engage with vulnerable customers (financial / non-financial) separately on key elements of research to understand what really mattered to them To achieve a robust customer focused set of data that answers the above questions, we will undertake a qualitative exploratory phase followed by a number of quantitative studies to determine customer priorities and their Willingness to Pay (WTP) for potential service improvements. It is imperative that, where appropriate, our research is statistically valid and representative of NW and ESW customer bases both demographically and geographically. The customers in the ESW region will be asked about service attributes relating only to water supply where customers in the NW region will be asked about service attributes relating to both water and sewerage services. he period of any contract(s) resulting from this procurement will be 36 months from the contract start date. The length of the contract may be extended by negotiation with the supplier for a further 36 months. This research covers three disciplines - research, economics, creative, we are therefore looking for a minimum of 3 suppliers for this framework with a maximum of 9