Nonresidential customers contribute significantly to water utilities’ financial resources and water resource demand profiles, yet they are not studied or benchmarked nearly as often as residential customers. Conducting business intelligence on a utility’s largest customers can improve the way the utility does business: the finance director can better project revenue, the billing staff can correct erroneous (and potentially costly) miscategorizations, customer service representatives can build relationships, and water resource planners can better understand how different nonresidential customers respond to price and nonprice signals. This Journal AWWA article (January 2016, 108:1, pages 51-60) was authored by the EFC and Valor Analytics describing an analysis of four urban water utilities in North Carolina to demonstrate the significance of nonresidential customers. Further, this article proposes methods of analysis that can be used to understand and project nonresidential customer water use, including key account programs, water use plateaus, and meter rightsizing. This study uses customer-level billing analysis and in-depth water utility staff consultations to assess better ways to measure the impacts of nonresidential customers’ water use and engage more effectively with this important customer class.
Read a summary of the report on the NC Water Resources Research Institute website.
For more information, go to the project page below, or contact Shadi Eskaf.
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