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Customer Engagement & Stakeholder Facilitation

Today, being customer-centric, or stakeholder-centric, in developing and delivering programs and services is essential. Whether it’s driven by regulatory requirements or to better inform product and program development; using advanced economic techniques, surveys and studies to understand preferences is fundamental to business decision making.

Customer research and engagement for better informed decision making

A solid understanding of customer preferences informs the inevitable trade-off between costs and quality, ensuring the services customers and the community value are delivered and priced efficiently.  

The move towards customer-centric regulation means regulated businesses are increasingly expected to demonstrate the way customer engagement has shaped their decision-making, services and pricing.

Governments are turning to customer engagement to inform program development and evaluation. And customer engagement continues to play a fundamental role in business decision making. 

Empowering customers using econometrics

Economics has a critical role to play in turning customer preferences into outcomes. We use advanced techniques to inform customer engagement, including willingness to pay studies using a range of techniques such as revealed preference methods (e.g. travel-cost method, hedonic pricing) and stated preference surveys, (e.g. choice modelling).  

We design and deliver customer research surveys using econometrics to support good decision making. Examples include:   

  • A contingent valuation survey to test customer willingness to pay for investments to improve water and wastewater service quality and to pay for investments in digital metering. 
  • A choice modelling survey to estimate the willingness to pay for recorded music used in exercise classes

Customer engagement

We have assisted businesses to design and deliver customer engagement processes across the IAP2 engagement spectrum including those that inform, consult, involve, collaborate and empower.

This is often in the context of price reviews for regulated businesses. For example:

  • Supporting Jemena Gas Network’s customer engagement as part of the development of their 2025-30 Access Arrangement including though participation in their Customer Forums. 
  • Advising Melbourne Water on how to combine customer research and engagement with economic analysis as part of developing its future five-yearly price submissions.  

Stakeholder facilitation

Stakeholder engagement is also a key aspect of many of our projects.

Understanding stakeholder perspectives and concerns enables us to ensure a common understanding of the economic problems and reflect those in our analysis. In our experience, the key success factors in communicating with stakeholders is listening and adopting a broad perspective.  

We use a combination of one-on-one consultation, small group meetings and facilitated workshops, in-person and online. Our consultants are experienced in navigating diverse views to ensure constructive exchanges. Our industry and economics expertise means we are able to apply our unique insights to ensure an informed approach facilitating stakeholder engagement. 

Our expertise in Customer Engagement & Stakeholder Facilitation

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