Customers want and expect consistently better service from their water companies. The measures of experience are a set of financial and reputational incentive mechanisms designed to encourage the water companies of England and Wales to provide excellent levels of service for their customers.
2025-30 Customer measure of experience, Developer services measure of experience and Business customer experience in Wales measure
The customer measure of experience (C-MeX) and developer services measure of experience (D-MeX) have been updated as part of the 2024 price review process. Alongside the business customer experience in Wales measure, they will come into operation from 1 April 2025 and will be reported against for the first time in Autumn 2026.
C-MeX
C-MeX is designed to incentivise water companies to provide an excellent customer experience for residential customers and is based on two surveys conducted each month:
- the customer service survey (CSS) – interviews with a random sample of customers that have recently contacted their company; and
- the customer experience survey (CES) – interviews with a random sample of members of the public.
D-MeX
D-MeX measures the service provided by water companies to their developer services customers (which include large and small property developers, self-lay providers, new appointees and other customers requesting a new connection), and is based on:
- a qualitative component – interviews with developer services customers that have transacted with a water company in the previous month; and
- a quantitative component – derived from the water company’s performance against a key set of service metrics.
We have appointed BMG research to carry out the C-MeX and D-MeX surveys on our behalf.
Business customer experience in Wales
The business customer experience in Wales measure is a mechanism to incentivise water companies operating wholly or mainly in Wales (Dŵr Cymru and Hafren Dyfrdwy) to provide excellent customer service to non-household customers. It is derived from:
- a contact survey – a random sample of non-household customers who contacted the company in the designated period; and
- a non-contact survey – a random sample of non-household customers surveyed about their general experience of the company.
The business customer experience in Wales survey contract has been awarded to Accent research.
Discover more about how the 2025-30 measures operate and how they were developed here.
2020-25 Customer measure of experience and Developer services measure of experience
We first introduced the customer measure of experience (C-MeX) and developer services measure of experience (D-MeX) as part of the 2019 price review process. Both mechanisms were designed to incentivise the 17 largest water companies in England and Wales to provide excellent levels of service to their customers. In effect from 1 April 2020, they replaced the service incentive mechanism which had been in place since 2010.
Find more details about the 2020-25 measures of experience here.
2010-20 Service incentive mechanism
We introduced the service incentive mechanism in 2010 as a tool to encourage companies to improve their customers’ experience of interacting with them, reduce customer complaints, and get things right first time. Each company’s customer service performance was assessed each year and included a measurement of the number of complaints they received as well as the results from customer satisfaction surveys.
Find out more details about the service incentive mechanism here.