Large utility expo attracts customer advocates and customer engagement specialists to highlight how utilities can improve their customer experience ratings
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 anaylsys 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.
The event features 200 speakers including the customer specialists below:
- Janine Young, Ombudsman and CEO, Energy & Water Ombudsman NSW
- Tim Wolfenden, CEO, Energy Bill Doctor
- Nefley Hetherington, Director, Stakeholder Relations, Energy Consumers Australia
- Petrina Dorrington, Acting Executive Director, Consumer Utilities Advocacy Centre
- Liam Smith, Associate Professor and Director, BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash University
- Damian Sullivan, Research and Policy Senior Manager, Energy, Brotherhood of St Laurence
- Jin Singh, Manager, Marketing & Communications, Australian Gas Networks
- Greg Garvin, Executive General Manager of People, Strategy & Stakeholders, TransGrid
- Johann Ponnampalam, Founder & MD, Decision Design
According to the Event Director, Roderic Mclauchlan:
“Utilities can do a lot with digital tools, such as smart meters, mobile technologies, and social media, and some of them are developing sophisticated engagement strategies. For decades utilities have viewed customers as “meter units” and the switching around to where the utilities can view themselves as trusted advisors to customers has been painfully slow. But an understanding of customer analytics combined with behavioural science strategies is driving a rapid change in utility strategies. We know this event will help motivate the uninformed that technology can really help lift their customer game. We hope that the customer related Awards competition we run as part of the event will help pull in all the utility players who seek the branding benefits from good customer experience publicity”.
Contact us today for more information on Australian Utility Week 2016.
Event dates and location:
Conference & Exhibition: 29-30 November 2016
Location: Australian Technology Park, Sydney, Australia
Event website: http://www.australian-utility-week.com/
ABOUT AUSTRALIAN UTILITY WEEK
Australian Utility Week is a brand belonging to Clarion Events which operates over 200 events in 35 countries from offices in the UK, South Africa, USA, Brazil Germany, Singapore, UAE, Turkey, and the Netherlands. Clarion can trace its roots back to 1947 and takes great pride in being one of the oldest independent event organisers in the UK. The teams at Clarion create uniquely effective and stimulating environments that can serve as a platform to build businesses, enhance customer relationships and accelerate product awareness. http://www.clarionevents.com/
