Hello from Sherman, Texas, the headquarters of CS Week! I’ve been associated with the largest utility CX event on the planet for decades and both a witness and participant to many tectonic industry changes including:

 

• The shift away from manual and batch processing to online systems with real-time updates and automated processes

• Relational databases focused on customers, not premises, and the integration of disparate software to enable a 360° view of the customer/utility relationship

• Utility deregulation 

• AMI and its tsunami of interval data, providing actionable intelligence and advanced analytics capabilities for every meter-to-cash process 

• Significant mergers and acquisitions, in both utilities, vendors and consultancies

• Cloud technologies and novel business models like managed services and hosted infrastructure

• COVID-19 pandemic and the workplace and employee relations change it ushered in and continues to influence

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This evolution has been exciting. I enjoy the business of utilities; I like that customer service operations keep changing to be better, faster, cheaper and more reliable. That’s also the stuff of CS Week, presenting today’s challenges and solutions while anticipating tomorrow’s. Utility professionals are unique in this conference space because they readily share and seek collaboration. Their willingness to openly show and tell both success stories and lessons learned from missteps is the key ingredient in CS Week’s secret sauce. Because of that transparency, utility professionals and industry sponsors/exhibitors trust CS Week.