6 July 2021
By Tom Collins
tom@TheCork.ie
Customers can now avail of quick access to relevant information on their water supply, based on where they live, thanks to the rollout of a newly designed Irish Water website. The changes will allow people around the country to immediately see what works and projects are ongoing in their locality by setting their location at www.water.ie.
File photo showing Irish Water worker
This is already proving helpful for customers experiencing issues such as water outages. A quick look at the Irish Water website immediately tells them what the issue is, the areas affected and when it will be rectified. With over 900,000 users on the site ever year, this revamp will ensure water.ie continues to provide an essential public service.
Designed to work on your mobile phone or any other device, the state-of-the-art website lets you set your location with updates and news relevant to your locality served upfront on the homepage. It also enables Irish Water to deliver important public health messages and reassurance to the public that we are working every day to provide a clean and safe supply of drinking water for our customers while returning wastewater safely to the environment.
Head of Customer Operations with Irish Water Yvonne Harris explains how this dynamic, new-look website will better serve customers: “We have upgraded our website so it is more user-friendly. We talked to our customers, we listened to their feedback and made changes to better improve the user experience for all.
“We are now keeping our customers informed, in real time, about any issues that may be impacting their water supply as well as updates on significant projects, leakage works and water quality.
“This new-look version of water.ie takes the effort out of the search for information by giving customers important, relevant, location-based information on the homepage. With one click to set your location or the option to choose a locality, visitors to the site can immediately view key information for their chosen geographical area.
“Now, instead of Donegal residents seeing news for Dublin, or Cork residents seeing information on outages in Offaly, they see local news, supply updates, and information on water quality and projects. And it’s one click to turn it off and return to a national view. In addition, a mobile-first design caters to the vast majority of visitors who use mobiles to access water.ie.”
Yvonne continued: “From research and data analysis, Irish Water’s Communications and Customer teams have a better understanding of what our customers want. The previous site structure meant customers had to undertake separate journeys to check for an outage or find relevant information on water quality or local news stories, making it a laborious process. The team wanted to give our customers the option to get a full picture of what was happening in their locality, all in one place.”
