Customer-centric asset management: An approach and applying it in practice

Looking across the regulatory regimes and changes that have occurred across gas, electricity and water sectors, there is a clear shift in regulators' focus and ability to articulate the importance of the customer; and in a way that meaningfully will impact how asset management and operations function and ultimately their bottom line. Utilities are ever more connected to their customer through formal channels, but social media informal channels are increasingly playing a role. Compared across all sectors, utility customer satisfaction is one of the lowest, alongside retail banking and local government service provision. Place this data point alongside the clear intent of regulators and there is, for most utility organisations, a need to adopt a customer-focused attitude to enterprise asset management. This paper will argue that although there have been significant investments by asset and operations functions in improving how they operate (with significant investments in process, systems and trying various sourcing strategies), many are only now starting to seriously engage in the debate about customer needs and impacts from an asset and operational perspective. In discussions with clients, and others in the industry supply chain, it is clear that there is a need to shift the debate to investment planning and operational delivery which truly delivers an acceptable customer experience and is built on customer willingness to pay. This paper will explain, based on customer service improvement programmes in blue collar environments (across utilities and other comparable sectors) an approach taken by utility companies to determine and then enhance their customers' experience of how they invest, maintain and operate assets. This experience covers understanding customer journeys, how this impacts operational processes and sys