How Sterling helped San Jose Water establish an ongoing dialogue with customers through the creation of a Customer Advisory Council
San Jose Water (SJW) is a public utility, serving over one million people in the greater San Jose metropolitan area, and one of the largest and most technically sophisticated urban water systems in the United States. SJW is passionate about delivering high-quality, life-sustaining water and exceptional customer service to families and communities in its service area.
Customer engagement is a two-way street
As a public utility, it is critical to SJW that it is seen as a trustworthy, dependable service provider that customers can rely on for clean water. While SJW consistently delivers reliable, high-quality water, it can be a challenge to convince customers it’s doing so cost-effectively, while also continuously investing in critical infrastructure and being good stewards of the environment. Even if a utility is doing everything it can to make the community a better place, customers are not generally predisposed to loving their water company. Rates always seem too high. Water attributes are quite subjective (i.e. taste) Infrastructure requires continuous maintenance. In short, customer service and satisfaction is key to SJW.
With such a large, diverse service area, it is quite difficult to gather feedback from each individual household or ensure customers are receiving the information they need about SJW’s operations, plans and priorities. In order to bring the service provider and customer closer together, Sterling recommended creating the San Jose Water Customer Advisory Council (CAC) to seek community input, align communications effectively, and enhance customer understanding of the context and considerations that go into key San Jose Water decisions.
Galvanizing the community
The strategy behind the CAC is to foster open dialog and an ongoing conversation with actual SJW customers. This helps SJW better address questions and concerns, while directly providing context that explains how pricing and other important operating decisions are made. By being as transparent as possible through the CAC, SJW is working to cultivate stakeholder evangelists who understand how the utility functions and can spread that knowledge in their own neighborhoods, thus improving overall customer satisfaction throughout the community. In short, the CAC demonstrates that SJW proactively solicits customer input and wants to be a force for good in its local communities.
Sterling worked with SJW to create the initial council by crafting an email campaign encouraging customers to apply to join, vetting completed applications, and conducting phone interviews with finalists to ensure that the group was large enough to be representative of the community, yet small enough to enable meaningful discussions and conversations. Once the council was filled, Sterling got to work planning a semiannual series of on-site, in-person events that included in-depth presentations from SJW subject matter experts and breakout sessions to hear directly from council members on a variety of topics.
Curating an event that excites
On-site meetings are the tentpole of the CAC initiative. Having these meetings in-person is a critical element of the strategy — affording the ability to have more direct, intimate conversation with SJW customers. However, if you’re going to invite customers to come to one of your facilities, you’d better make sure you have a thoughtful agenda of topics that are not only interesting, but also directly relevant to their daily lives. (Oh, and free lunch and some cool SJW swag helps, too!)
Before the first event occurred, Sterling and SJW asked the new council members what topics mattered the most to them and what they wanted to learn most about. This helped frame the initial agenda and led to meaningful conversations about water quality, billing, and conservation. Since the initial meeting, Sterling and SJW have incorporated lessons learned and council member feedback into communication priorities and subsequent CAC meeting discussion topics — leading to even better and more relevant conversations.
An immediate takeaway from the CAC initiative was learning that members don’t want to be on the council just to discuss billing or to simply listen to presentations. They want to learn more about where their water comes from, how it’s treated, and what SJW is doing to ensure its safety. They also want to see behind the scenes. Building in time to tour various facilities has now become a mainstay of each meeting. Members have been able to see how meters are tested and calibrated for accuracy, toured a water treatment facility to understand what goes into delivering reliable high-quality water, and taken a bus up into the mountains to see SJW’s watershed. By adding an interactive element to the day’s program, Sterling and SJW have created unique experiences few others can access. This, in turn, helps demonstrate to customers all that goes into delivering water from the source to their tap.
Results that matter
After three successful CAC meetings, Sterling and SJW have created a sustainable customer advisory framework that encourages a two-way conversation. To some, a public utility may be nothing more than a faceless service provider, but SJW has made a significant effort to understand their customers’ needs and instill trust.
After each council meeting, Sterling sends surveys to the council members to get feedback on the quality of the overall session, the relevance and interest level of each breakout discussion, and what can be improved for the next time. Through this process, Sterling and SJW have learned which types of questions come up most frequently. We’ve even been able to anticipate what certain members of the CAC are most likely to be interested in discussing or learning about. Each CAC meeting has become more informative and engaging due to a genuine feedback loop that has been created.
In the words of a CAC member following the last event: “It’s my first time being on a board of this sort, so I’m still learning what to expect and what is expected. But I enjoyed getting to interact with the operational team and observe the day-to-day operations. It was a very educational day with really great information. You guys really have it together. Kudos.”