Goulburn-Murray Water has completed this year’s customer survey
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Everyone has an opinion about G-MW, but what do the official, anonymous surveys have to say about the rural water authority?
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G-MW has released its annual customer satisfaction surveys in which about 800 people are asked for a one to 10 rating of how the authority performs in areas like value for money, reputation, trust and overall satisfaction.
Customers are randomly selected based on the size and type of service they receive and the amount of water G-MW delivers to them to ensure a representative cross-section of customers are surveyed.
An examination of the surveys for the last three years, shows an overall improvement in all of these four areas, but there have been some bumps along the way.
Floods in 2022 may have influenced the results in 2023, and an on-going dispute over pricing for diverters may have also had an impact.
One of the key measures, ‘overall satisfaction’ saw an improvement between 2022 (65 per cent) and 2024 (68 per cent), following a dip in 2023.
A fundamental question about ‘trust in G-MW’ received a 63 per cent score in the survey for 2024.
Of some concern may be the question for customers about G-MW perceptions — ‘G-MW reputation in the community’ which has hovered around the 50s, and has marginally improved over the three years to 56 per cent.
G-MW managing director Charmaine Quick said the surveys were run to inform communications and engagement approaches and to assess customer satisfaction
“We are pleased our ongoing commitment to deliver sustainable, efficient and adaptive water services, and keep pricing stable despite increased input costs, saw improved customer satisfaction during 2024,” Ms Quick said.
“Since 2020, the trend in customer satisfaction with water and customer services and prices has generally been maintained or improved.
“We appreciate our customers taking time to provide this valuable feedback.”
The corporation has extended the survey in 2024 by adding four more questions.
The question, ‘easy to deal with’ attracted a 67 per cent result, but pricing ‘fair and reasonable’ could muster only 51 per cent.
G-MW’s annual report records the authority received 61 complaints during 2023-24, compared to 67 in the previous year, 47 in 2021-22 and 68 in 2020-21.
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