Norming behavior examples for high household water users

1. How are you defining your top users? High water use is defined as more than 15,000 gallons per month. Utility Billing records are used to identify users of more than 25,000 gallons per month. 2. Do you adjust for lot size, family size or any other factors? Property appraiser data is used to identify pervious area. All pervious area is assumed to be irrigated at 3/4" per week (2 gallons per sq. ft. per month). Indoor water use is assumed to be around 2,000 gal. per month per person. 3 persons per household is assumed. If actual water use for the 2 most recent billing periods is greater than 10,000 gallons over the target water use for the property, then proactive contact is initiated. 3. How do you contact them? Homeowners are contacted by email if available and by phone if no email is available for the account. Voicemail message is left if direct phone contact is not achieved. The message offers FREE onsite assistance with irrigation system including controller programming. Education on irrigation and landscaping is provided along with publications from the University of Florida on landscape management and plant selection plus rain gauge and irrigation calibration tool (tuna can glued to a 6 inch nail). 4. Can you send your script or marketing collateral you use in your outreach? For email - yes For voicemail, the script is brief to identify as non-commercial, free, associated with the Utility and offering assistance. 5. Have you tested to determine effectiveness? All outreach recipients continue to be monitored after outreach and results compared to average water use prior to outreach. Average results are a reduction in irrigation water use of 10,000+ gallons per month that persists indefinitely. Annual results from 1 person monitoring billing records, initiating contact and delivering outreach and subsequent monitoring results in saving around 25 million gallons per year from 200 accounts. This saves customers about $250,000 per year and increases revenue to the utility by another $250,000 per year due to the saved water being available to new construction accounts that benefit from customer charge, water charge and sewer charge instead of just the water charge at the highest rate of $5.55 per 1,000 gallons. 6. Any suggestions on implementing a similar program? Access to billing records is essential which requires close cooperation with Utility Management and is welcome because it increases customer service and reduces customer complaints. Many customer complaints that can be associated with irrigation are referred for assistance by Customer service representatives. ,

1. How are you defining your top users?
High water use is defined as more than 15,000 gallons per month. Utility Billing records are used to identify users of more than 25,000 gallons per month.

2. Do you adjust for lot size, family size or any other factors?
Property appraiser data is used to identify pervious area. All pervious area is assumed to be irrigated at 3/4" per week (2 gallons per sq. ft. per month). Indoor water use is assumed to be around 2,000 gal. per month per person. 3 persons per household is assumed. If actual water use for the 2 most recent billing periods is greater than 10,000 gallons over the target water use for the property, then proactive contact is initiated.

3. How do you contact them?
Homeowners are contacted by email if available and by phone if no email is available for the account. Voicemail message is left if direct phone contact is not achieved. The message offers FREE onsite assistance with irrigation system including controller programming. Education on irrigation and landscaping is provided along with publications from the University of Florida on landscape management and plant selection plus rain gauge and irrigation calibration tool (tuna can glued to a 6 inch nail).
4. Can you send your script or marketing collateral you use in your outreach?
For email - yes For voicemail, the script is brief to identify as non-commercial, free, associated with the Utility and offering assistance.
5. Have you tested to determine effectiveness?
All outreach recipients continue to be monitored after outreach and results compared to average water use prior to outreach. Average results are a reduction in irrigation water use of 10,000+ gallons per month that persists indefinitely. Annual results from 1 person monitoring billing records, initiating contact and delivering outreach and subsequent monitoring results in saving around 25 million gallons per year from 200 accounts. This saves customers about $250,000 per year and increases revenue to the utility by another $250,000 per year due to the saved water being available to new construction accounts that benefit from customer charge, water charge and sewer charge instead of just the water charge at the highest rate of $5.55 per 1,000 gallons.
6. Any suggestions on implementing a similar program?
Access to billing records is essential which requires close cooperation with Utility Management and is welcome because it increases customer service and reduces customer complaints. Many customer complaints that can be associated with irrigation are referred for assistance by Customer service representatives.





Chris Dewey
Florida Friendly Landscaping (TM) Program Coordinator
Pasco County Extension
United States

Chris, thanks for the very detailed response it will be very helpful as I start developing our program. It looks like you have achieved some amazing results and I am fortunate here that our utility billing team are very willing to help so that part will not be a problem. I really appreciate your taking the time to respond.

John Brooks
Sr. Analyst
City of Thousand Oaks
United States
www.toaks.org/GoGreen

Dear John,
Chris has already provided a very detailed review, very impressive.

As for outreach, there is still a group of stakeholders that donot access emails and are very uncomfortable with call backs especially if they are asked to provide information on their "high" water use. To capture these groups there is a better chance of your getting a response if you send a print letter with a return postage paid. This minimises the efforts to provide a response.

to determine effectiveness of a program, go for a pilot program then revise the program as required before rolling it out full scale. The results are more robust and reliable.

From the pilot program, prepare a casestudy - should be brief with pictures - more prominence means more effectiveness - role model concept

happy to discuss but would need more information on the region or area you are targeting

Good luck
Cheers
Tas

Tasneem Kanpurwala
Australia

Thanks Tas,

I am planning on doing some type of mail campaign to notify the high users. I will test a couple of variations to see what types of responses I get. Thanks for your suggestions. John

John Brooks
Sr. Analyst
City of Thousand Oaks
United States
www.toaks.org/GoGreen

In development of the program I described in an earlier post, I have used direct mail, email, voice mail and direct phone contact to offer free irrigation assistance to high water users . Direct mail resulted in a response rate about what you would expect from commercial direct mail campaigns (1-3%). I use email when billing information includes that information and listed phone numbers are disconnected or wrong numbers or exceedance of target water use is less than 10,000 gallons per month. I leave a voice mail message when direct phone contact is unsuccessful. Everything other than direct phone contact results in a very low response rate similar (<5%) to direct (snail) mail. Direct phone contact, however, results in a quite high positive response of 10-50%when assurance is given that I am indeed working with the utility, there is not cost involved and nobody is trying to sell them anything. In my experience, the main barrier overcome by direct phone contact is that most people assume that they are being contacted ( by mail, email or voicemail) in order to sell a product or service (despite clearly identifying myself as a government entity) and also find it hard to believe that someone ( especially government) would contact them to identify a problem and offer a solution without charge. In customer contact cards ( mailed back to the county) left with every client, 100% rate the service as excellent and highly praise county government and the Utility for providing such a valuable service to their citizen clients.

Chris Dewey
Florida Friendly Landscaping (TM) Program Coordinator
Pasco County Extension
United States

Hi Chris, we do not have the staffing to make the calls and do surveys at this point. I am attempting to see if I can make any difference in usage relying on the norming principle. Essentially, if I inform the top 10% of users that they are in the top 10%, will they move towards the norm? If this fails to make much of a difference, then resources may be allocated towards more direct engagement. Thanks again for your guidance - John



John Brooks
Sr. Analyst
City of Thousand Oaks
United States
www.toaks.org/GoGreen