What does it take to deliver best practice Customer Experience (CX) in the water industry? Christopher Brooks, Customer Excellence Lead for Enzen, looks back at the Utility Week Water CX Conference.
There are very few CX events dedicated to specific sectors, and even fewer for the water industry and its unique market conditions. So the Utility Week Water CX Conference in Birmingham was an invaluable opportunity to find out more.
In each conversation, it wasn’t long before PR19 commitments and CMeX targets were raised. It’s an area Enzen has spent the last few months reviewing from every water company’s perspective.
Not only has it meant we developed a suite of CX solutions to accelerate success in the sector, but it provided the content for a talk on the day by Sanjeev Kumar, our UK Head of Business Transformation, entitled ‘What is best practice CX in water?’
The customer as your purpose
The focus of the presentation was to challenge thinking from water companies when it comes to customers. When regulator incentivise companies to satisfy customers, it can create a culture of seeing the customer as a target to hit.
Sanjeev proposed looking at the customer as the purpose of the organisation. Drawing on case studies and data to support his argument, Sanjeev explained how it’s possible to calculate the commercial value of customer experience, and how by moving from a ‘target’ mindset to a ‘purpose’ mindset both customer and organisation can reap benefits.
The day was also an opportunity to launch our new series of CX webinars. Consisting of a series of 20 minute ‘bites’ of CX Excellence, the webinars are a chance for utility CX practitioners to share how they’re approaching delivering the PR19 commitments.
Dedicated expertise
Other companies represented at the conference by speakers included OFWAT, Bristol Water, Scottish Water, Octopus, Affinity Water and the Institute of Customer Services. Each presentation offered fascinating perspectives on the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Yet despite some great ideas, techniques and strategies currently in development, it’s clear customer satisfaction levels haven’t increased and the utility sector remains down on other industries like financial services and local government.
That’s where we believe Enzen can make a difference. Through our dedicated CX Centre of Excellence, we can make CX work for utilities, creating solutions that align to what matters most to customers, the agendas set by regulators and the unique strengths and commercial ambitions of each utility.
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