The Rural Financial Counselling Service in Gippsland has recently appointed Kylie Holmes as its new executive officer.
Board chair Richard Habgood said Ms Holmes had worked in the water services industry for the past 16 years, firstly with Grampians Wimmera Mallee Water and since 2005 with Westernport Water.
Working with water service organisations Ms Holmes has had involvement with the rural and farming sectors with water supply services.
Based at the service’s Leongatha office, a priority issue for Ms Holmes will be to quickly recruit a small business rural financial counsellor whose role will be to provide support to small businesses.
The region’s water and sewer customers are being asked to give their local water corporations some feedback.
Gippsland’s four water corporations – Westernport Water, South Gippsland Water, Gippsland Water and East Gippsland Water – are working together to survey customers to get feedback on overall satisfaction, current services as well as ideas on how best to plan for the future of the region.
“These sorts of surveys are really important for us both in terms of measuring where we are at now but also assessing how customers think we should move forward,” survey project spokesman, Gippsland Water’s Paul Clark, said.
The telephone surveys will begin tomorrow and continue for two weeks.
Mr Clark said the survey company, Insync, will clearly identify themselves at the start of the call and will not engage in any sales pitch during the call.
“This is all about gathering information from customers and not selling any product or service. If customers receive calls from people offering to sell water filters or any other water device, that is not our survey,” he said.
The calls will take about 10 minutes with the customer being asked 20 questions about service, expectation and price.
Results of the surveys will be shared via the media and on individual water corporation websites from December.
