Participants at this year’s Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival will look at tackling the cost of living crisis and are set to come together to find ways of making services even better for customers.
A number of sprints, hacks and dashes being held at this year’s event will look at post-pandemic customer service, smart metering and bettering billing.
As well as that, innovators will look at helping to further improve services for customers in vulnerable circumstance when they gather at Newcastle Racecourse on July 12th-14th.
During the three-day festival, innovators will gather from all over the world to look at societal issues covered under the blanket topic of “Customer Heroes”. The aim of the different events will be to see how services can be improved for all customers by using collaborative analytics and data science.
One of the sprints will focus specifically on the rising cost of living – and what utilities can be doing to ease any stress being felt by customers.
Another will see how utilities can re-design bills to make sure customers find them easy to understand, while also making sure they contain the right information to help our customers save money on their bills.
Setting the pace for these sprints are industry-leading experts from massive organisations such as Proctor and Gamble, Salesforce. From academia, the water company are working with Newcastle University and The Royal College of Arts and collaborating with brilliant local businesses Word Nerds and Shout Digital.
Angela MacOscar, Head of Innovation at Northumbrian Water, said: “The whole reason that we run our Innovation Festival is for our customers, who are well and truly at the heart of everything we do.
“Although all of the events taking place at the festival will relate to our customers in some way, the ones specifically included in the Customer Heroes bubble will directly impact the people in our region.
“We know that our customers have faced a lot over the past few years with the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, so I know that our innovators will be passionate when trying to find exciting new solutions.”
The Innovation Festival is taking place on July 12-14 at Newcastle Racecourse, and online sprints are taking place from June 24th.
Registration is now open, so head to www.innovationfestival.org/register