Smart Energy Water unlocks global utility digital transformation using AWS

Digital transformation is reinventing the core operations of electric, gas, and water utilities. Over the last several years, digitization has helped utilities evolve to meet current and future challenges. As innovation now touches business- and customer-centric operations, the question is this: How has the rapid scale of adoption occurred?

A new generation of proactive customers is changing the way utility organizations function across service and field operations. The digital revolution has ensured that information is available at the customer’s fingertips anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Today’s utility customers demand more convenience and control of their energy and water usage. Digital self-service platforms allow customers to take actions through web portals and mobile channels, and communicate with their service providers in real time. At the back, utilities understand the customer lifecycle, and monitor customer behavior through AI and ML powered analytics. This capability, in turn, allows utilities to perform intelligent customer actions and provide 24×7 customer support and service. Utility field operations teams are frequently looking for ways to ensure safety and compliance while empowering the field workforce with secure system access using field mobile computing and advanced digital technologies.

Smart Energy Water (SEW)’s AI and ML powered, leading digital customer and workforce experience platforms, leverage the power of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) automatic scaling, secure cloud to transform all aspects of utility business. With a vision to engage, empower, and educate billions of people, our SEW team of over 600 associates supports electric, water, and gas utility service providers in their digital transformation journey in more than 20 countries worldwide. Regardless of location, we help our utility customers deliver excellence in digital customer service and engagement. Utilities have adopted the SEW platform to modernize their customer experience, enable 24×7 connectivity for their customers, avoid potential disruptions in customer communication, and to maintain business continuity. SEW is driven by the voice of the customer and we value our alignment with the AWS culture of customer obsession.

4.9-star customer rated result    

AWS worked in support of SEW to deploy a Digital Customer Experience platform for Southwest Gas, a provider of natural gas service to more than 2 million customers across Arizona, Nevada, and portions of California. The project team delivered a customer self-service platform with a full 360-degree view including a native mobile experience and omnichannel interaction support. The platform also empowers utility customer service agents to quickly meet customer requests with tailored, personalized experiences. Southwest Gas gained enhancements in customer communication while achieving operational efficiency through a reduction of call center volume. An immediate success was the platform’s high customer ratings: a 4.9 average star rating across app stores. The Southwest Gas program was also recognized in April 2020 by utility industry peers with a CS Week finalist award in the category Innovation in Customer Engagement.

Digital self-service supports utility sustainability

Understanding the need for environmentally aware business decisions, SEW conceptualized advanced digital self-service based on AI and ML technologies. As customer expectations increase, so does the need for companies to deliver exceptional experience. To journey through the transition from expectations to experience, SEW has accompanied several utilities and helped them understand customer needs, analyze business benefits of moving to self-service, and develop a pragmatic implementation plan that builds sustainable self-service.

Envisioning the opportunities that lie ahead, SEW has worked alongside AWS to support transference of more control to the utility end customer to transform business processes from person-to-person to self-service. In today’s dynamic times, lives have been radically altered, with customers demanding more from their service providers. SEW’s utility customers have embraced digital web and native mobile platforms to connect and communicate via a single, integrated multi-channel platform. AWS, through its highly scalable and reliable infrastructure capacity, has worked along with SEW to help utilities with 24×7 communication services. The partnership has helped address customers’ changing needs through proactive strategies and delivery of a superior experience.

It is now more critical than ever for utilities to move more business use cases and workflows to the cloud to ensure delivery of personalized customer and mobile workforce experiences. Next generation utilities are leading an aggressive movement towards a more resilient and nimble way of operating with cloud native digital solutions. SEW will continue to innovate in support of our utility customers in collaboration with AWS. Visit SEW to learn more.