PORTSMOUTH WATER AND VYNTELLIGENCE
(2025)
Helping High-Consuming Households Reduce Water Use
Developing a new behaviour change approach to household water efficiency, helping high-consuming customers identify and adopt realistic water-saving actions.
The challenge
Portsmouth Water is exploring new ways to help high-consuming households reduce their water use through a more personalised, scalable approach.
Working with Vyntelligence, Portsmouth Water is trialling a virtual water review process that allows customers to share short videos of water-using areas around their home. These reviews can then be assessed alongside smart meter data to identify practical personalised opportunities to save water, energy and money.
The opportunity was clear: if customers could receive tailored advice based on their own home and routines, they may be more likely to take action than they would be from generic water-saving messaging.
However, the process needed careful support. Customers had to be encouraged to take part, advisors needed confidence in how to deliver personalised behaviour change conversations, and the communications journey needed to feel helpful, human and motivating rather than corporate, judgemental or overly technical.
Weir worked closely with Portsmouth Water’s Demand Management team, Customer Support colleagues and Comms team to support the development of the customer journey, staff training and customer communications.
Our role included:
designing and delivering behavioural science-led training for customer-facing teams
helping advisors feel more confident having supportive water-saving conversations with customers
developing practical call structures and role-play scenarios
advising on how to frame feedback in a way that avoids blame or defensiveness
building a customer communications journey for high-consuming households
drafting email copy, reminder prompts, follow-up messages and call scripts
developing modular advice copy blocks for common water-saving opportunities, including showers, laundry, dishwasher use, washing-up habits and hot water use
creating a customer communications toolkit to support the pilot and future automation
The work focused on turning water-saving advice into something customers could realistically act on.
Rather than asking customers to make large lifestyle changes, the messaging was designed around small, achievable actions that fit into existing routines. Financial benefits were placed first, with environmental benefits used as a secondary motivator where relevant.
What Weir did
Training development & delivery
Copywriting
Communications journey
Toolkit creation
Behaviour Change Approach
The programme was built around a simple behavioural insight: people are more likely to change when advice feels personal, achievable and immediately relevant to their lives.
Weir’s approach focused on:
reducing friction so participation felt quick and easy
making advice feel tailored to the customer’s actual home and habits
encouraging one realistic action at a time
using tangible savings such as litres, bath equivalents and bill impacts
reinforcing positive progress once customers reduced their water use
avoiding guilt, shame or judgement around high consumption
helping advisors use curiosity and empathy rather than instruction
The communications were designed to feel as if they came from a real person who had reviewed the customer’s submission, rather than from an automated campaign.
The output
Weir produced a detailed Customer Communications Toolkit for Portsmouth Water’s Virtual Water Review Programme.
The toolkit included:
a mapped customer journey for the current pilot and future automated model
customer recruitment and reminder emails
follow-up call scripts for non-responders
personalised advice email guidance
follow-up messages for customers whose usage reduced, stayed the same or increased
behaviour reinforcement emails to encourage second actions
modular advice copy blocks
a reusable copy toolkit for future communications and automation
This created a practical foundation that Portsmouth Water can use during the pilot, while also supporting future scaling of the programme.
Why It Matters
Water efficiency programmes often struggle because they rely on generic advice. Customers may understand the message, but still fail to act because the advice does not feel relevant to their household, their routines or their barriers.
This project takes a different approach.
By combining smart meter data, virtual home reviews, personalised advice, advisor training and behaviourally informed communications, Portsmouth Water is developing a more targeted way to support high-consuming households.
The work is still in its early stages, with pilot delivery and results to follow. However, the foundations are now in place for a customer journey that is practical, scalable and rooted in behaviour change.
The results so far…
This project is at the beginning of its journey, so impact results are still to come.
At this stage, the key outcome is a clear and behaviourally informed framework for engaging high-consuming households, supporting advisors and helping customers take realistic water-saving action.
The programme now has:
a structured customer journey
trained customer-facing advisors
a suite of customer communications
modular advice content ready for manual use and future automation
a consistent behaviour change approach across calls, emails and follow-up activity
As the pilot progresses, Portsmouth Water will be able to test which interventions lead to measurable reductions in household consumption and build on the approach over time.
