Australian Utility Week takes place at Australian Technology Park Sydney on 29-30 November 2016. It’s a large scale expo with 5 conference streams designed specifically for Australian and New Zealand utilities looking to transform their utility business models to include digital enablers and customer experience improvement. The focus on customers is new and is getting attention from the industry.
Technology advancements, such as smart grids and online behaviour analysis are creating new opportunities in customer engagement and exciting transformations of service standards. Most utilities are keen to demonstrate that they are improving their customer experience. They want their customers to notice. Since the cost of acquiring new customers is increasing, the best ways for utilities to improve profitability are to reduce churn.
This expo is the only one of its kind in Australia or New Zealand. It has a stream called The Customer Focused Utility. Shifting investment resources to better satisfy customers is the new mission of utilities whether electrical, gas or water. They are doing this in 3 main ways designed to meet their dual mandate of providing excellent customer experience and optimizing cost-to-serve.
Firstly they are mapping customer journeys and getting feedback via surveys and focus groups on performance metrics. Secondly they are adopting behavioural science nudge strategies to shift customer’s responses to market offers. Finally they are changing their engagement platforms to include more digital and mobile accessible services. Australian Utility Week profiles all 3 strategies and more.
The event has been running for 14 years and will attract over 1500 participants which will include the largest gathering of utility customer engagement professionals in Australia.
