NWC leads OUR 2025 mystery shopping review on customer experience

KINGSTON, Jamaica — The National Water Commission (NWC) earned the top overall customer experience rating among Jamaica’s main utility providers in the Office of Utilities Regulation’s (OUR) 2025 Mystery Shopping Study.

In a release, the OUR said the yearly assessment examined how customers were treated across several contact points, including physical service centres, call centres, website chat functions, social media pages and mobile apps.

The regulator reported that customer service has improved across the major providers, but results still differed depending on the company and the channel used.

NWC posted the highest overall score at 79 per cent, which the OUR said was 21 percentage points higher than the year before.

That rise came mainly from stronger call centre results, up 43 points, and better in-store service, up 22 points, even as the organisation’s digital engagement rating slipped by three points.

Digicel placed second with a 76 per cent overall score, representing a 12-point jump from the previous year.

The OUR said Digicel’s increase was linked to gains in call centre and in-store performance, while its digital engagement fell by four points.

Jamaica Public Service (JPS) secured an overall score of 74 per cent, improving by four percentage points, with the release pointing to better results tied mainly to its mobile application.

Flow ranked fourth on 67 per cent after recording stronger in-store and digital service, but the company also saw a sharp 25-point drop in call centre performance.

The OUR said call centre operations have emerged as a major advantage for NWC and Digicel, while JPS showed comparatively steady performance across the different service channels.

At the same time, the study flagged repeated customer-service gaps across the sector.

Mystery shoppers noted that staff did not always offer greetings or show courtesy, customers sometimes waited a long time without receiving updates, empathy was often lacking when dealing with billing matters and service interruptions, and some agents showed little enthusiasm.

The OUR said Market Research Services Ltd carried out the research between August and October 2025, using 437 mystery shopper interactions drawn from a range of demographic groups.

Those participants visited retail locations, called customer service centres and used online chat options while testing the various utility providers.

OUR Director of Consumer and Public Affairs Yvonne Nicholson called on service providers to strengthen digital services by allowing customers to fully resolve cases through mobile apps, adding artificial intelligence-based triaging that can smoothly transfer people from chatbots to live agents, and enabling users to upload documents, monitor requests and receive online status updates.

The regulator also urged improved customer-facing skills through training for frontline staff, with an emphasis on greetings and acknowledgement, active listening, empathy, clear explanations of processes and timelines, and ensuring issues are properly handled before the interaction ends.

The OUR said work has already started for the 2026 Mystery Shopping Study.