In the UK, everyday life can often come to a standstill in an instant. Water providers are just one of many utility companies that people rely on day in, day out. So when something out of the ordinary happens, and people’s access to it becomes limited, it’s important for brands to listen and respond to customer comments otherwise you may well receive comments like this:
This tweet shows how much customers expect brands to live up to their expectations. In the UK, if you pay your water bills, you expect to be provided with a safe, reliable source of water don’t you?
Whichever industry you work in, there will almost always be competition in some way shape or form. Social media monitoring and analysis enables to you to track mentions of your own brand, and benchmark performance against your competitors to give you vital intelligence to help you plan your digital strategy. By gaining insights into competitor brands you’ll be able to see what you you’re doing differently to them, as well as what you may need to do to increase engagement with your customers, and manage your digital reputation.
We ran a comparative social analysis, from the past 31 days, of four UK-based water providers to see how each one fared up on social, identifying what people talked about the most for each brand. The water providers we focused on were:
Anglian Water
Northumbrian Water
Southern Water
Thames Water
As you can see, the four companies received varying levels of social media conversation. However there was one more dominant than the rest. Thames Water (the grey line) sent the water flowing the fastest on social over the 31-day period. It hit a peak at 91 mentions on 18 April. Key talking points included reports of leaks, a representative from Thames Water attending an event in London, as well as the company’s apprentice scheme.
Sentiment
It’s all well and good looking at the number of mentions your brand is getting however it’s not all numbers, numbers, numbers. In order to understand customer motivations and behaviour, it’s vital to know what people are actually saying as well and the sentiment of these comments.
Out of the four water companies, Northumbrian Water received the largest percentage of positive mentions accounting for 27.8% of the company’s total. In comparison, Thames Water received the most negative making up 19.7% of the overall number.
What does sentiment around the Anglian Water conversation look like?
Anglian Water was praised for its efficiency in dealing with water leaks:
As well as encouraging energy saving:
In terms of negative sentiment, one customer frowned upon the company’s work ethic, thought they had sent out too many workmen and questioned resources:
While other customers questioned errors in debt collection linked to their water bills. For example a forum reply on consumeractiongroup.co.uk talked about a bill sent to a former customer which was meant for his ex-wife, and had been sent to the wrong address.
Northumbrian Water
While Anglian Water was doing its bit for the environment, it seems Northumbrian Water wasn’t. Some of its customers were subjected to brown discoloured water and were less than happy (as you can tell from the language used:
As horrible as that sounds, Northumbrian Water acknowledged the problem quickly and sent out a tweet from its official Twitter account, aimed at those in the affected area.
But, social media users also suggested Northumbrian Water’s employees did a great job getting the area back to normal by cleaning up afterwards:
Additionally, the company recently decided to invest in replacing pipes to improve overall water quality in the catchment area:
Southern Water
Southern Water customers were quick to acknowledge the good service and quality of the water:
However, some Southern Water customers were also concerned about debt collection policies:
Water bill payments weren’t the only topic to be slated… there were also comments about a lack of communication when water was turned off unexpectedly:
Thames Water
The quality of the water was also a key talking point for Thames Water, but for a very different reason. One tweeter referred to the taste as ‘yuk’:
As well as Thames Water receiving comment about issues with sewage pollution:
Don’t give up on Thames Water just yet though! While this has been going on, the company has also taken part in a multi-million pound deal to use innovative sources of renewable energy resources, which may also help chivvy along any long-term solutions to other problems:
From this brief analysis of some of the water companies in the UK you can see how insightful using a social media monitoring tool can be to help you understand what your customers are saying about your brand, what is working and the areas of service where you need to listen and respond.