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The Affordability Battle
How to Maintain Infrastructure Without Compromising Affordability There’s a lot we don’t agree on; however, there’s one thing we can all say is true—everyone deserves access to clean water. Drinking...
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The Surprising Hidden Costs of Water Leaks
Water utilities might not often think of it, but water leaks contribute to a significant portion of home repair costs each year. There are many causes of water damage including things like household...
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Natural Language of Water Customers Interpreted
Making Sense of Customer Feedback As customers demand greater transparency and data immediacy from their services providers, the ability for water utilities to collect unstructured text data is...
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Cotati, CA – Bridge to AMI: Removing the Guesswork
Cotati, California is a bedroom community of 7,500 residents located in Sonoma County about 45 miles north of San Francisco. As a progressive, forward thinking municipality, the city has a long...
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3 Ways Water Utilities Can Increase Customer Satisfaction
Over the next 20 years, the U.S. water utility industry needs to make trillion dollar infrastructure investments to maintain the service reliability and quality that citizens have come to expect....
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Connecting Dots for Consumers
Only a quarter of consumers today feel that their utility is connecting the dots for them—that the utility is properly informing them about how much energy and water they use, and then correlating...
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Addressing the FEAR of Water Innovation
I recently spent two days among colleagues from a broad range of water utilities at an amazing peer-to-peer conference of the California Water Efficiency Partnership (CalWEP). The assembled group...
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The Best of WaterSide Chats
Over the past several years, WaterSide Chats have evolved into a powerful channel through which WaterSmart communicates to the public. It’s our way of discussing developments in the water industry; we...
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The surprising numbers behind mobile device usage
For most Americans, owning a mobile phone isn’t a want or a need, but rather a must. According to Pew Research, over 95% of Americans own a mobile phone, two thirds being a smartphone. In fact, even...
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Defining Total Customer Engagement
Elusive Definitions Total Customer engagement is an amorphous concept that is difficult to define and quantify. Depending on the nature of a given business, engagement may be described using language...
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Cutting edge customer engagement through the mail?!
Everything old is new again. Vinyl records are making a comeback, 80’s horror flick/pop culture tribute ‘Stranger Things’ is the number 1 show on Netflix, and snail mail is the hot new way for...
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WaterSmart 2017 Year in Review
2017 has been a big year at WaterSmart! Over the past 12 months we expanded our customer engagement platform to provide automated communication management for utilities’ most time-intensive topics –...
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Water Meter Data Management – To Sink or SWIM (Part 1)
(In part 1 of this two part post, we look at the history of meter data management systems and how they apply to the water industry): Water Meter Data Management: To sink or SWIM? The role of a Meter...
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Water Meter Data Management – To Sink or SWIM (Part 2)
(In part 2 of this post we review additional benefits and challenges of an MDM and what ideal technology solution best suits water industry needs): Benefit and Challenge 2: Interoperability Electric...
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Changing a Risk-Averse Culture
How do you shift a risk-averse culture to adopt new thinking? In a recent WaterSide Chat, WaterSmart featured three industry leaders who have earned reputations for being innovators in the water...
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Utility Service Requests Done Right
Can you remember the last time you had to start or terminate your utility service? How would you rate the process in terms of overall difficulty? Anecdotally, having looked at scores of utility...
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Noticing Water Leaks
Water leaks happen. In fact, they happen a lot. Data that WaterSmart has collected from over 4 million households indicates that as many as 50% of households will experience some type of water leak...
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Watershed Moments: A framework for maximizing utility-customer interactions
How much time do customers spend thinking about their water utility? According to consulting company Accenture’s consumer survey, if they are anything like the average customer, it’s around 8 minutes...
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Reducing bill shock through design and testing
Bill shock. We’ve all experienced it. You receive a bill and let out a curse when you see that the amount due is WAY higher than expected. Research has found that “a high bill is something that 40% of...
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Defining Total Customer Engagement
Elusive Definitions Total Customer Engagement is an amorphous concept that is difficult to define or quantify. Depending on the nature of a given business, engagement may be described using language...
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