When it comes to sustainability, how often do citizens feel connected, obliged or responsible?
Not so long ago, sustainability was seen by many as a peripheral ‘green’ issue, hardly central to our lives. However, that mindset has been changing.
Increasingly, people, communities, businesses and governments are choosing to address and adapt to a range of disruptive forces which are now bringing the impacts of mankind’s effect on our planet’s delicate ecosystem to the fore.
This is where utilities and policymakers can make a difference and forge deep, empowering relationships with citizens. At the helm of the sustainability movement are citizens.
The traditional views of one-way delivery of services are transforming to a different form of relationship based on engagement and empowerment, bringing both of the key players in the race to net zero, from backstage to front and centre.
Utilities are finding new ways to connect and collaborate to better manage precious resources. At Smart Energy Water (SEW) we make the case for a fully integrated sustainability model through new digital tools to help address the citizen experience gap.
Citizen education a precursor to engagement
Raising awareness and sensitising citizens around the sustainable development goals remains a critical precursor to their engagement and collective participation.
As primary agents of their own development and wellbeing, the engagement and participation of citizens and community-level actors is invaluable and can be leveraged for greater action, monitoring, and impact.
To save energy and water, utilities need to build on awareness and identify programs meant to promote truly sustainable outcomes. With digital tools and smart platforms enabling two-way communication, citizens can start to feel motivated and encouraged to co-innovate.
Engaging citizens on their own terms
Engaging citizens as primary change agents enables the development of communities and makes these citizens, their communities and cities, ‘smart’ across a range of factors.
Utilities and governments are starting to encourage ownership of goals, connect citizens with actionable insights for their everyday living, and empower them to hold their governments and utilities accountable to their responsibilities and obligations.
Now, to better manage energy and water, utilities can engage citizens with personalised one-to-one conversations, consistent omni-channel experience, self-service through mobile and web, and get smarter with AI-powered conversational bots and analytics.
The utility experience can morph into an everyday ‘living’ experience with people managing their homes, offices, vehicles etc.
Empowering citizens anytime anywhere
Digital is the backbone for the modern-day citizen experience, with smart cities, e-mobility, smart homes and beyond. With intelligent technologies, it has become easier to perfect self-service and communication, in addition to simplifying utilities’ work.
By embracing cloud, AI/ML, mobility, advanced analytics etc. utility providers are set to easily become more resilient and adaptive. The agile innovation comes with leveraging the digital-first approach, vitally important to stay relevant in the current ecosystem.
These systemic changes empower the citizens to do more, saving energy and water proactively. We have begun these journeys with Australian and New Zealand utilities. We’re bringing innovation that’s helping utilities leverage digital tools to transform its customer experience, empowering connected citizen journeys.
Utilities are finding it cost and time effective to uplift and execute their engagement strategy by adopting SEW’s Smart Customer Mobile (SCM®) digital CX platform.
It has provided them with an easy and secure way to manage accounts, track usage, get real-time notifications, collect payments, reward sustainable behaviour, support capital works and connections processes, and enable rich personalised experiences for different customer segments.
The intuitive UI/UX, offered on mobile apps and the web along with comprehensive prebuilt use-cases, have helped utilities elevate the experiences of both the utility personnel and end consumers.
About Smart Energy Water
Smart Energy Water, with its innovative and industry-leading cloud platforms, delivers the best Digital Customer Experiences (CX) and Workforce Experiences (WX), powered by AI, ML, and IoT Analytics to the global energy and water providers.
This sponsored editorial is brought to you by Smart Energy Water. For more information, visit www.sew.ai.
