Listening to customers at scale

As rural water supply systems expand, understanding how households experience services becomes increasingly important. While governments can track infrastructure and scheme performance, they often have limited visibility into issues such as irregular supply, inadequate quantity, or concerns about water quality. Citizen feedback can help fill this gap, but existing mechanisms are often fragmented, reactive, or difficult to scale.

Jal Ki Baat was developed in partnership with the Government of Assam to explore how citizen feedback could be captured at scale and used to improve service delivery. The initiative uses AI-enabled voice technology to conduct short surveys with households on key aspects of water service delivery, including supply, quantity, quality, and overall satisfaction.

The pilot tested different approaches to citizen engagement and generated insights that state and district teams could use to identify issues, prioritise action, and track improvements over time. Alongside the technology, the project explored how citizen feedback could become a routine part of governance by connecting community experiences with decision-making processes.