Evaluation Tool to Implement Good Practices in the Area of Customer Management for Water and Sewerage Operators

Date
Jan 2011
The following is a tool developed by the Water and Sanitation Division of the IDB for evaluating customer management practices in use by water and sewerage utilities. In order to facilitate the use of this tool, all matters which relate to customer management have been grouped into four main functional areas: the "Billing Factory" (or the recurrent billing and collection activities); Revenue Management; Customer Care (management of contacts with customers); and Customer Marketing, a relatively new activity in water and sewerage companies, which aims to study and propose solutions tailored for various types of customers. The tool is an Excel program, designed to be freestanding. This tool may be used in two major ways, as a support for dialogue between a professional of customer management and an external expert, or directly by the company itself to measure the consistency of different approaches to customer management and perceptions regarding their effectiveness.