Large utility networks have millions of customers of all shapes, sizes and behaviours. Big ones. Small ones. Medium-sized ones. Some who spend lots of money. Individuals. Hospitals. Schools. Sports clubs.
Knowing who your customer is, is critical to knowing what network to build and how to maintain it. Your customer is the centre of your business and having a data-driven understanding of who they are, what they say, how often they complain and what they want is extremely important.
EXPLORE has worked with large utility networks to assist with optimising their customer bases:
Data science and Artificial Intelligence can be deployed in valuable ways to improve your understanding of your customers, as well as to improve the experience your customers have when interacting with you:
When you have many thousands of customers, it can often be difficult to give each one the right level of rapid, professional and efficacious response. Managing call centres with the appropriate level of staffing to cope with fluctuating demand levels, is challenging.
EXPLORE-AI developed a solution for a large water utility that used AI to triage a barrage of customer emails, and split them into genuine complaints versus sales enquiries or repair tracing questions. The models were able to make this differentiation with a high degree of accuracy and are able to improve over time by learning from the results. Complaints were then passed to a specialist team that were able to respond rapidly and action the appropriate activities.
Most Utilities have a list of Priority customers that have to be handled differently during an outage or supply interruption. These customers include the elderly, the physically disabled, those reliant on life support machines etc. In the case of a water utility, alternative arrangements have to be made to ensure bottled water is received by such customers during any prolonged interruption.
EXPLORE-AI has built a Priority Services Register for a large water utility, which enables complete and timely uploading of relevant customers, accurate tracking of their most recent location, record keeping of the history of events that have previously necessitated special arrangements, and comprehensive contact details including carers. Additional intelligence can be incorporated into the solution to automate more of the process.