Surveying Customers’ Satisfaction -
Improving Water Utility Performance
“Managing for development results” is the new
credo of the International Development Community. Thus
priorities have changed. Good planning and timely service
delivery no longer provide sufficient justification for
involvement. Instead, co-operation projects will be asked to
account for the results of their efforts.
Emphasis is increasingly shifting from “quality at entry” to
“quality at exit”. To fit this new paradigm, the monitoring
systems also have to be readjusted. For monitoring in the water
sector this means e.g. not simply counting the increasing number
of households that have access to public water supplies, but
assessing the opinion of the targeted group regarding the water
supply.
In the Yemen Water Sector Program such a result-oriented
monitoring process is to be concluded in October 2008. A
customer satisfaction survey was conducted in seven towns which
are representative of the 14 towns where GTZ and KfW are
currently active. 850 mostly female water users were interviewed
by exclusively female Community Mobilizing workers. As a base
for these interviews a questionnaire was developed that assessed
satisfaction with the following issues: (i) water supply, (ii)
water quality, (iii) sewerage service, (iv) changes in quality
of life and (v) satisfaction with service level of the water
utility.
The results were much better than expected: 75% of the customers
were satisfied with the water situation in general, although
results vary widely from town to town and issue to issue.
In a closing-Workshop in the Ministry of Water and Environment
in Sana’a on the 15th of October the results were the subject of
a lively discussion among HE The Minister of Water and
Environment, the General Managers of the seven participating
water utilities and the survey-conducting Yemeni enterprise
Interaction. Topics like the establishment of neighbourhood
water committees which should have a watch dog function over the
Water Utilities were debated. Involving the private sector in
the water supply, the financial restriction of the Water
Utilities due to unpaid customer bills, and the importance of
taking strong political decisions on the local level were other
issues which were discussed.
To sum up: the costumer satisfaction survey is viewed as an
important management instrument to improve the service quality
of the Water Utilities. The Minister of Water and Environment
therefore encouraged the Water Utilities to assign money to
their budget for repeating this survey effort every second year.
October 2008
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