Improving customer and stakeholder engagement

The focus was on developing better planned engagement and adopting a partnership approach’, so that community members can be involved in decision-making about their services.

GMW has more than 20,000 customers and a diverse range of stakeholders spread across 68,000 kilometres.

The quality of GMW’s customer and stakeholder engagement is vitally important to inform decisions about how to continuously support the region and provide efficient, affordable, cost-effective and reliable water supplies.

Five recommendations focus on improving customer and stakeholder engagement and GMW’s role in helping to promote future investment opportunities within the region.

Implementation progress

Recommendations 17, 20 and 21 are complete. These involve designing a customer and stakeholder engagement program, consulting customers on pricing and a review of the Customer Charter.

Two recommendations have been embedded in GMW’s ongoing practices for future delivery:

Recommendation 18

Reviewing operating rules for GMW’s Water Services and Customer Committees to improve the value provided by these groups.

Recommendation 19

Developing policies and economic tools for deciding when and where to attract new customers across the GMID.

Progress with reviewing the operating rules for the GMW Water Services and Customer Committees will be reported to the GMW Board and Customer and Stakeholder Committee and DEECA.

Agricultural Redevelopment Committee

Implementation of Recommendation 19 is occurring through GMW’s participation in the Agricultural Redevelopment Committee (ARC), which includes partner agencies GBCMA, NCCMA, Agriculture Victoria and DELWP.

The ARC is established as part of the Goulburn Murray Resilience Strategy with an objective focusing on a Regional Investment Prospectus to provide branding of the region and its significant relative advantages. Through this process, information on land, water and infrastructure assets is intended to be made available to potential investors.

Key highlights

• The 2019-2020 Essential Services Commission (ESC) price submission process gave GMW the opportunity to explore and integrate new ways of engaging with customers and stakeholders.
• 10% of GMW’s customer base contributed to the development of GMW’s 2020 ESC price submission.
• GMW has introduced modernised online customer services and single-point-of-contact customer support.
• There is now more flexibility for customer contact through an online booking system and a new contact model for GMW’s regional offices.

Page last updated: 08/09/23