23 Mar Transitioning Towards A Digital Utility
By Smart Energy Water
The transformation of customer expectations continues at an accelerated pace. With more channels and more options, the expectations of today’s tech-savvy customers have massively increased. To address to these concerns, utilities have adopted digital transformation as the new buzzword. The global utility industry is incorporating technologies such as cloud, mobile, big data and analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc. to position themselves as new drivers of growth worldwide.
Enhancing engagement and empowering customers is common conversation across many industries. For utilities, in order to improve and personalize their communication with customers there is a wealth of data available that can be put to use. The data emanating from AMIs, Smart grid, Mobile, IoT and other diverse sources is the starting point for actionable insights, which give utilities the consumption patterns of their every customer, and therein lies an invaluable opportunity to customize their communication.
In addition, moving towards a service-based model, would further enhance their trust in their utility. Services like frequent and timely notifications, including planned and unplanned outages, access to comparing one’s usage within the zip, digital bill payment through mobile devices and giving the power to control one’s home through few taps of a smartphone would eventually augment the whole utility-customer relationship leading to better engagement and utility loyalty. Also, digital platforms also provide customers with the much-needed self service capabilities that help them find answers to their queries on their own, reducing dependency on customer care representatives to resolve their issues.
To understand why this reinvention is so urgent, let us look at the sheer scale and scope of parallel changes in the global energy & water landscape. Utilities are making informed decisions towards investment in digital technologies. They are leveraging cloud, big data analytics and mobility to boost the productivity of field services, effectively interact with customers in new ways and undertake predictive analytics. These technologies are just the beginning: the power of next-generation technologies like AI, machine learning and quantum computing will surely multiply the opportunities across all industries.
Digital technologies today are also contributing towards keeping customers informed to make better decisions towards sustainable living. Utilities that are geared to adopt and leverage digital technologies are primed to improve their bottom line and entice customers to make better choices and informed decisions to do their part in achieving sustainability goals.
Credit goes to technology!
To know more on how we are transforming the face of Utilities, get in touch – info@smartenergywater.com