Social Media Monitoring for Water Quality Surveillance and Response Systems

Key Takeaways

A literature review and interviews with utilities were conducted to understand the use of social media monitoring for the early detection of water quality problems.

Utility case studies show that social media can be used for customer engagement, crisis communications, and monitoring and surveillance for water quality.

Future opportunities include integrating social media with customer service and surveillance and response systems.

Law enforcement, emergency management organizations, the public health community, and corporations monitor social media for security, emergency response, disease outbreaks, and customer satisfaction. Social media monitoring is relatively new to the water sector, but we could use social media for similar purposes, as customer complaints are a reliable source for early identification of problems in the distribution system.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has long recognized customer complaint surveillance (CCS) as a component of a water quality surveillance and response system (SRS). An SRS involves the active deployment and use of monitoring technologies and strategies and enhanced surveillance activities to assess, visualize, and analyze data information to provide a timely warning of potential water contamination incidents and to initiate response actions to minimize public health and economic impacts. CCS relies on communication from utility customers about indicators of potential water contamination, particularly unusual taste, odor, or appearance. The effectiveness of this component requires that customers know how to report concerns about their drinking water quality to their water utility. CCS data need to be routinely reviewed. If unusual water quality is detected, utilities follow the steps indicated by the gold arrows in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Water Quality Surveillance and Response System Architecture With Social Media Monitoring

According to a 2007 article by Andrew Whelton and colleagues published in Journal AWWA, traditional tracking of complaints revolved around customers contacting their utility by leveraging existing call and work management technologies. Today, utilities can take advantage of social media, and “contact” centers are replacing “call” centers. Social media monitoring tools (or “social listening”) provide both free and fee-based services for surveillance of social media. The type of monitoring service varies by utility based on need and available resources (both staff and funding); Figure 2 shows a CCS information flow diagram that integrates social media.

Figure 2.

Customer Complaint Surveillance Information Flow Diagram With Social Media

Background

To better understand how water utilities incorporate social media into their daily operations, we conducted a comprehensive literature review. A majority of the existing information focused on how utilities use social media to reach their customers. In particular, Social Media for Water Utilities, a 2017 project published by The Water Research Foundation, highlighted that the water sector was behind other industries, including the electric sector, in using social media. The study analyzed the social media profiles of 60 drinking water and wastewater utilities across the United States and showed that only a small percentage of them were using social media, and of that group, only a small percentage successfully reached their customer base.

Information about proactively monitoring social media was almost nonexistent for water utilities, so we reviewed water-related documents from the public health and emergency management communities for social media monitoring practices that could be adopted by water utilities. One of the earliest of 106 articles that we found in the literature review was a 2011 article by Vanessa Speight and Steve Via published in Journal AWWA, which contained a brief section about the increased use of social media among all demographics, specifically referring to using social media for emergency communications and customer feedback. Two pieces of literature—“Social Media in Emergency Management” from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and “10 Types of Social Media and How Each Can Benefit Your Business” from Hootsuite—identified six categories and 10 types of social media, respectively. Forty-two monitoring tools were identified: six were no longer in business, five offered services for both free and paid subscriptions, 15 were completely free, and 16 required a paid subscription. The 28 monitoring resources that we identified included media consultants, online courses, apps, government working groups, guidance documents, and vendors in the water sector (e.g., for customer relations, work management, and asset management).

ANSI/AWWA Standard G420–17, Communication and Customer Relations, contains the brief section, “Utilizing Social Media for Water and Wastewater Utilities,” which states that a social media plan shall “address concerns, suggestions, and praise immediately on message boards.” One of our desired outcomes from the utility interviews was to understand the key element of the standard’s charge to “address concerns.”

Utility Interviews

While conducting this review, we identified water utilities that were leading the way in proactively using social media to interact with their customers. From this list of utilities, we conducted interviews with nine water utilities varying in size from small to large and including both public and private water suppliers. The purpose of these interviews was to find out how utilities were using social media to communicate with their customers, how they increase the reach of their message (especially during an emergency), and how they monitor social media accounts and evaluate their success.

In addition, we conducted five interviews with public health and emergency management entities, as these sectors are further along with incorporating social media into their daily activities, especially when actively monitoring social media for public health emergencies. The goal of these interviews was to see whether any of their practices could be applied by water utilities as part of their CCS data streams. The utility interviews contained approximately 30 pre-scripted questions to guide conversations in four categories:

• General

• Customer engagement

• Crisis communications

• Monitoring and surveillance

The questions set for the public health and emergency management entities varied slightly.

Findings

The results of our interviews are qualitative and quantitative and include anecdotal information that resonated with participants, along with systematic synopses of the interview notes for metrical information. As shown in Table 1, we compared nine questions from four categories across all interviewees, and then further refined this information into the findings that follow.

Table 1.

Categories and Selected Questions From Utility Interviews

Topic	Question
General	What level of commitment (staff/funding) does your utility make to social media communications?
Outreach and engagement	What are the main topics your utility posts about using social media (e.g., service updates, educational material, utility-specific information)? What topics get the most reaction from followers?
Outreach and engagement	Has your utility advertised or paid for promoted content on social media to reach a larger audience? If yes, do you feel the investment is worth the result?
Outreach and engagement	What other approaches have you taken to increase the number of social media connections in your community?
Crisis communications	Have you used social media for crisis communications? If so, what types of crises?
Monitoring	Does your utility use any paid social media monitoring services or other data analytical service to monitor social media content and/or trends? Are the tools you use scalable or applicable only to a wider data set?
Monitoring	Do you have any suggestions on how utilities could utilize social media to monitor water systems to identify issues in real time?
Monitoring	Do you have any suggestions for products (tools/guidance) to address gaps?
Not applicable	Other questions?

General

Findings from the general category concluded that common peer-to-peer sharing sites and microblogging sites were the most used social media platforms, but media sharing sites are gaining in popularity. Also, staff time for social media ranged from 0.25 to over 1.0 full-time equivalent staff; in other words, multiple individuals worked more collectively than what a single individual would have worked if working full time on social media. Many utilities have multiple employees who have access to the accounts, as customer service occurs all hours of the day. Some utilities have staff dedicated solely to digital media, while others integrate social media duties into staff members’ existing communication activities.

Customer Engagement and Outreach

In the current digital age, people expect to have instantaneous information at all times. Customers expect businesses to provide customer service around the clock and increasingly use social media as their preferred method of communication. Water utilities, as service providers, are not immune from this expectation and, like other commercial entities, have adopted social media as a means of communication.

On the basis of the utility interviews, we identified the following the key points about customer engagement and compiled utility-specific case studies (see sidebar on page 50).

• Utilities post about a variety of topics (e.g., “brand”), but construction updates are the most common. Other topics include seasonal, educational, conservation, rate increase, and emergency- or outage-related posts.

• Social media allows utilities to control their message, as opposed to more traditional forms of communication that rely on a separate entity such as television or radio.

• Almost all (eight of nine) utilities interviewed have paid for advertising or promoted content. Most found the return on investment to be worth the cost. Responses varied about how, if, and when they would pay for advertising again. Only one utility said it would not pay for advertising again, as the assertion was that the brand was established.

• Using hashtags and mentions is seen as a great way to reach wider audiences.

• Social media is meant to be social and fun, but it is important to stay true to the values and mission of the organization.

Crisis Communication

Our literature review identified several articles that discussed how water utilities have used social media during emergencies. In most cases, it was out of necessity rather than by planning. During the interviews, the utilities shared more recent examples of social media use for crisis communications. The incidents included extreme weather events, water main breaks, water quality issues, and the need to address rumors or misinformation. The incidents, whether from weather or man-made, affected treatment, distribution, or water quality (see sidebar on page 51).

Following are some of the key findings for utilities on using social media during an emergency.

• Social media allows a utility to reach a much wider audience than relying solely on traditional means of communication. However, traditional means of communication are still important, as not everyone uses social media.

• Social media provides two-way communication with customers, as opposed to the one-way communication through traditional media.

• Updates can be posted immediately.

• Customer sharing of posts from their utility can lead to reaching a wider audience, as can leveraging the social media accounts of elected officials or government agencies.

• Rumors and misinformation can be addressed directly to ease any concerns and provide current information and updates.

Monitoring and Surveillance

Social media monitoring tools (Table 2) provide services that allow utilities to retrospectively monitor their social media platforms and evaluate their effectiveness. These tools can be either free or fee-based, with the latter typically providing more advanced monitoring capabilities. Some of the free tools also offer additional capabilities for a fee—for example, automated monitoring could also be used to alert for deteriorating water quality conditions when customers use social media to complain about the taste, odor, appearance, or pressure of their water. Advanced analysis using social media tools was not specifically encountered during interviews with water utilities, but it was mentioned in those with emergency management and public health entities.

Table 2.

Fees and Features of Social Media Monitoring Tools

Tool	Free or Fee	Features
Sprout Social	Fee	Multiple platform/schedule/analytics
Hootsuite	Fee	Multiple platform/schedule/analytics
HubSpot	Fee	Multiple platform/schedule/analytics
TweetDeck	Free	Single platform/monitor/schedule
Twitter Insights Facebook Analytics	Free	Single platform/analytics
Google Analytics	Free	Multiple platform/website/analytics

Source: USEPA (US Environmental Protection Agency). 2018. Webinar.

Customer Complaint Surveillance for Detecting Drinking Water Contamination. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dVd22W1DGo&feature=youtu.be

During the interview process, water utilities described how they use these tools to monitor social media platforms, and almost all monitor for mentions of their utility name using basic keyword and Boolean searches. A “Boolean search” allows users to combine keywords with operators (or modifiers) such as AND, NOT, and OR to further produce more relevant results. For example, the search could be “drinking water AND [utility name].” Some of the fee-based tools offer additional monitoring services that use more advanced algorithms or geolocation tracking. While these tools can help utilities monitor social media platforms and evaluate the effectiveness of their content, utilities were quick to point out that robust features are often underused and actual human analysis is always necessary.

Some of the other key findings related to how utilities use social media monitoring tools are as follows (see sidebar on this page):

• More than half of the water utilities interviewed currently pay for social media monitoring and aggregating sites. Almost all use free monitoring and aggregating sites for social media.

• Most of the social media platforms also offer their own analytics within the platform, but the analytical data can be limited.

Benefits and Challenges

For a water utility to have a strong social media presence, buy-in and a commitment of resources from upper management are required. The amount of resources allotted to social media depends on the size and needs of each utility; one size doesn’t fit all. For example, some utilities hire digital communications professionals who are dedicated strictly to social media. Other utilities share social media duties among employees as a small portion of their other duties.

No matter the level of commitment, social media can boost a water utility’s capabilities. We identified the following social media benefits during the interview process:

• The ability to quickly push information to the public

• Two-way communication with customers

• Crisis communication during an emergency

• A supplement to traditional outreach and communication plans (e.g., for construction, conservation, water rates)

• Detection of water quality issues (e.g., taste, odor)

• Provision of metrics for executives to aid management buy-in

• Free platforms with optional low-cost advertising options

• Control and propagation of utility messaging

• The ability to “humanize” the utility—i.e., to put a personality behind the message

As with most technology, along with these benefits come challenges of adopting a social media program. Challenges that we identified during the interviews included the following:

• A commitment of resources for staff, funding, or advertising

• Attainment of management buy-in

• Variations in the procurement process for purchasing social media monitoring software

• A disconnect between public expectations of immediate responses to all issues versus utility budgets that don’t allow for 24/7 monitoring

• The challenge of responding to rumors, misinformation, and negative comments

• The fact that most social media posts are not geo-coded, thereby limiting the ability to determine the true location of conversations

• Privacy, control, and setting issues, such as the inability to monitor conversations in community and private groups

At a national level, consistent taxonomy across utilities; crowd-sourcing of complaint data; and geolocation of data for analysis, privacy, and education may remain as leadership, educational, or legal issues.

For water utilities, the benefits of implementing a social media program greatly outweigh the challenges. Utilities can also use social media to educate their customers and improve customer satisfaction ratings. Two-way communication allows customers to report problems via social media instead of waiting to get through to customer service. Most importantly, social media has the potential to alert the utility of a water quality issue in real time.

Next Steps

Additional interviews are planned with public health entities to assess their use of social media monitoring in public health surveillance, specifically regarding detecting drinking water–related issues. Health-related complaints, consistent with gastrological illness and contaminated water, are especially of interest to utilities, and additional study is needed before social media monitoring can be integrated into the Public Health Surveillance component of an SRS. However, two ideas to improve the water sector that emerged from our interviews are integrating customer service with social media and integrating SRS with social media.

Customer Service Integration With Social Media

One utility suggested using customer relationship management (CRM), application programming interfaces (APIs), and work management systems to scan for words and create work orders. The interviewee explained that utilities can educate customers to report any problems or issues immediately to the utility on social media. Using the utility CRM software through APIs, one can generate work orders in a work management system by scanning for keywords such as hydrant, inlet, or taste. Service representatives could review the work orders before acting or follow up with original posters if more information is needed. Incorporating CRM with APIs into a work management system would advance social listening to a higher level by automatically integrating social media.

One utility has a short-term goal to get issues such as leaking hydrants and clogged storm drains to be reported more through social media than by phone. These issues are easy to self-report and don’t usually require a customer to speak directly with a service representative. This paradigm shift for reporting problems is easy to measure when many call center metrics are complex equations and difficult to clearly communicate how improvements are being made. Measuring the number of incidents reported through an application or social media versus the call center shows improved utility performance and customer service. More CRM APIs within the work management system would also reduce wait times for the customer. A subsequent progression would be to expand this concept to water quality issues.

SRS Integration With Social Media

Water quality SRSs are implemented at the utility level. To integrate social media as a data stream into the CCS component of an SRS, utilities must first implement a CCS. USEPA has provided guidance on implementing CCS in the 2015 Customer Complaint Surveillance Primer (EPA 817-B-15–002C) and the 2017 Designing Customer Complaint Surveillance for Water Quality Surveillance and Response Systems (EPA 817-B-15–002C). Further, USEPA has provided statistical tools to analyze the occurrences of complaint data to ensure that false alerts are minimized.

Basic principles of CCS are that customers know how to communicate with their utilities and utilities can capture all complaint information to focus on water quality concerns. It would be easy to capture water quality complaints using social media if customers self-identified issues consistently. However, since people use several different words to describe a single issue, the utility must be able to capture and analyze words through robust keyword and Boolean searches.

Figures 3 and 4 provide ideas for creating keyword and Boolean searches for monitoring social media through CCS. For example, a Boolean search could be “water AND contaminated.” This would limit the search results to only those documents containing the two keywords.

Figure 3.

Flavor Profile Wheel

Figure 4.

Word Cloud to Describe West Virginia Chemical Spill

The water sector has published extensively on customer complaints. A flavor profile wheel for water, as shown in Figure 3, could be a starting point to identify taxonomy for analysis using social media data. Keyword and Boolean searches could yield a word cloud, similar to descriptors that 34 panelists used to describe the odorous component in the West Virginia chemical spill (Figure 4). The public health and emergency management sectors have developed robust keyword and Boolean searches by incident.

Social Media Use Improves Operations

Utilities are taking advantage of social media for three main purposes:

• For general outreach and customer engagement

• To communicate with their customers during a crisis

• For actively monitoring and listening to their communities to proactively identify and respond to any issue, including water quality concerns

Social media monitoring tools provide services for active surveillance of social media. The type of monitoring service varies by utility based on need and available resources (both staff and budget).

Social media use will increase in the future, and water utilities must continue to adapt in order to reach and engage their customers. Social media monitoring tools allow utilities to monitor social media conversations to respond to crises and identify potential water quality issues. Advancing the use of social media in daily operations, including the use of social media as the newest data stream for customer complaints, will improve utility operations and safeguard public health.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AND OUTREACH CASE STUDIES.

East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD)

EBMUD provided social media training to its staff through Cal State East Bay’s six-month certification program. The program covered reputation management, content development, crisis communications, and strategic planning. EBMUD expanded its social media use to include Nextdoor, a neighborhood-based social networking service, through which it has the ability to reach all of its more than 408,000 members to communicate district-wide information or communicate only to specific neighborhoods for project updates within its service area.

District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water)

DC Water hired a full-time digital communications manager who is responsible for monitoring its social media accounts, developing content, and interacting with customers. DC Water believes that utilities need to develop their “brand voice” and provide engaging content to grow an audience as it helps to show the personal side of the account—that there is a real person behind the account. It is important to make your audience laugh or create content that people can relate to through storytelling.

CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS CASE STUDIES.

Philadelphia Water Department (PWD)

In January 2018, Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) had hundreds of water main breaks throughout the city because of low temperatures. The customer service department was overwhelmed with calls, sometimes with wait times of more than two hours. PWD issued a press release informing customers to report main breaks via Twitter and Facebook. In this case, call wait times were cut by 50% by allowing customers to report main breaks using social media.

Avon Lake Regional Water (ALRW)

ALRW had an icing incident in January 2014 during which its intakes at the water plant started to become blocked, reducing the flow that could be drawn in. As a result, ALRW used social media (primarily Facebook) to notify customers—in addition to reverse 911 messages and traditional communication outlets. During that incident, the utility’s following on Facebook increased from 250 to 1,750 followers overnight. By the end of the week, more than 60,000 people had received the message. The customers appreciated the utility being forthright and providing updates in real time.

American Water

In March 2018, there was a water main break in a Virginia town, and a large portion of the city was left without water service. The views on the Virginia American Water Facebook page immediately increased. Customers posted, “Why don’t we have water?” and “What’s the problem?” The utility responded by mobilizing its team to answer all of the questions, post status updates, and inform affected customers about where to get bottled water. Most of the effort was focused on Facebook, with some responses coming through Twitter. Because of these efforts, customer service center calls did not significantly increase during this incident. Properly communicating on social media relayed the message effectively and quickly to the community.

Austin Water

Austin Water had a couple of crises over a six-month span in 2018—specifically, it had to issue boil-water notices as a result of flooding and then later for taste and odor issues caused by zebra mussels. Its department emergency operations center (EOC) prepared and responded to customers as needed. Staff constantly monitored the utility’s social media accounts and triaged which comments needed an immediate response. Customers were encouraged to call the city 311 call center, and a service request for Austin Water was created. During the zebra mussel incident, a service request was created for every call that, when mapped, determined what areas needed flushing. Austin Water even set up an outbound call center within its EOC from which representatives responded to every single customer (more than 2,000 calls).

MONITORING AND SURVEILLANCE CASE STUDIES.

District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water)

DC Water uses Google Analytics Acquisition insight to understand how its social network contributes to its website traffic. These data allow the utility to see which platforms and what types of content generate traffic to individual landing pages. Understanding which social media platforms and which content types most refer traffic back to the website will drive future content creation. On July 12, 2018, a brief, low-pressure incident resulted in a boil-water advisory. Social media monitoring and increased call center notifications corroborated the incident in real time. By using social media to communicate during this crisis, DC Water was able to control the narrative of events while providing real-time updates and responses to customers.

Other Sectors

Public health entities have used social media tools for issues related to Legionella outbreaks and beach closures. Emergency response organizations have used social media tools to direct resources (e.g., bottled water) to areas in need as well as for efforts around search and rescue, downed powerlines, and determining shelter locations during flooding. The New York City Department of Health announced that since 2012, 10 outbreaks of foodborne illness were identified solely through a computer system jointly created with Columbia University. The computer system tracks foodborne illnesses on the basis of certain keywords that appear in Yelp restaurant reviews. According to a 2018 press release from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, this strategy has helped Health Department staff identify approximately 1,500 complaints of foodborne illness in New York City each year.

AWWA Resources.

• Leverage Social Media in Times of Crisis. Wittern M, Elliott M. 2020. Journal AWWA. 112:5:78. https://doi.org/10.1002/awwa.1506

• Analysis of Water Utility Websites Reveals Missed Opportunities. Vedachalam S, Kirchoff M. 2020. Journal AWWA. 112:3:62. https://doi.org/10.1002/awwa.1465

• Eleven Myths About Social Media Every Utility Manager Should Know—and How to Overcome Them. Villegas S. 2013. Journal AWWA. 105:6:45. https://doi.org/10.5942/jawwa.2013.105.0082

These resources have been supplied by Journal AWWA staff. For information on these and other AWWA resources, visit www.awwa.org.

About the Authors

Nelson Mix is an environmental engineer at US Environmental Protection Agency Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water (www.epa.gov/groundwater-and-drinking-water), Washington, D.C.; Mix.Nelson@epa.gov.

Aaron George is an environmental scientist at General Dynamics Information Technology, Alexandria, Va.

Adam Haas is a research scientist–epidemiology at General Dynamics Information Technology, Cincinnati, Ohio.