ACMA – CCF meeting

Stella AvramopoulosKildonan UnitingCare

27 November 2013

Action plan - Customer Support Steering Council, water industry

Industry Consistency

Customer Data

Solutions & Products

Communications

All water utilities should work together to develop a common industry standard for identifying and supporting customers in vulnerable and hardship situations

Develop systems to analyse known customer data and identify likely vulnerability and hardship

Ensure a wide range of solutions are available to meet the interests and needs of different customer segments

Raise awareness of what is available to help customers manage their water bill, who qualifies and how to access it

• 42% of households are vulnerable to financial hardship

• 35% of customers had not paid their water bill on time, every time in the past year

• 58% of customers don’t know what support is available

• 41% of customers would be too embarrassed to ask for help

• 48% would appreciate their water company reaching out to offer help

Pivotal to this study was a segmentation of the surveyed community to better understand the nature and extent of vulnerability and risk. This resulted in five distinct segments as shown in the adjacent chart.

Mature, secure 20%

Vulnerable families, handle with care 27%

Lower risk, smooth operators 10%

Medium risk, water watchers 15%

Hi-tech young Joneses 27%

Customer Segmentation

Understanding the nature of vulnerability, community sector

GOALS

1. Prevent abuse and neglect 2. Act earlier when children are vulnerable

3. Improve outcomes for children in statutory care

There are 647,000 Victorian families with children

130,000 to 195,000 families (20 – 30%) might become vulnerable

54,00 families (8%) known to be vulnerable

10,000 families per annum (1.5%) investigated to assess if children at risk of harm (parents unable to protect)

4,000 families per annum (<1%) where children need protective intervention

Victorian Service Sector Reform (Shergold)

- Achieving the best outcomes for clients

- A holistic approach- Partnership- Shared governance- Provider choice

Principles- Program flexibility- Citizen control- Public accountability- Early intervention- facilitation

Recommendation 16“Making better use of information and communications technology”

• Standardised data definitions• Common database and information and communications technology platform to support

integrated service delivery• Data shared openly and appropriately between government agencies and contracted

providers• Users enabled to build online communities of interest

Questions…• Where are there common threads across

sectors?• Where are there opportunities for

collaboration and joined up approaches?