The industry most fundamental to human survival is on the brink of demise. Small water utilities across America are struggling with an impossible proposition — deliver clean water to growing populations while managing environmental uncertainty and threats, all on aging infrastructure. Oh, and do it without a rate increase.
It’s like being asked to wave a magic wand, but the reality is that delivering this miracle is do or die. Consolidation or privatization remains an ever-present threat for jurisdictions that struggle to recover the full cost of their operations. And that’s concerning: the community needs a stake and a voice in its relationship with water service providers.
To pull the rabbit out of that hat, water utilities need to innovate. Here are three principles to follow to tackle the challenges ahead.
1. Make Customer Relationships Your North Star
To be self-sufficient, utilities need to charge rates that reflect the cost of service. The problem is that customers don’t want to pay.
And if you step into their shoes, it’s easy to see why. Clean water is effortless for them: it’s as easy as turning on the tap. The occasions when they do interact with their utility aren’t cause for celebration: an unexpected bill, a delayed permit, a burst pipe.
When customers understand the value you provide, you’ll be able to charge for that value and to decouple rates from metered usage.
So, the first thing utilities need to transform is their relationship with customers. They can do that by focusing on the following:
- Public engagement. Reaching out to your community when times are good means you’ll have them on your side when times are bad. Social media is an under-tapped resource to show the true beauty of the water industry and educate customers on the challenges we’re facing. Drought-prone East Bay Municipal Utility District sets a great example of how social media can empower positive water behavior and educate on water scarcity. Remember, the approach must be conversational — it’s not a megaphone.
- Customer service. Call hold times, paperwork, and information black holes can no longer be the status quo. Leveraging technology can help eliminate pain points those customers face and make it easier for them to communicate with you.
- Insights. Consider how technology can help give customers better insights into their own water usage and incentivize conservation.
2. Embrace Incremental Innovation With a Digital Strategy
When we think of innovation in water, we often default to complex systems: multi-year tech projects that, by the time they’re complete, require additional investment just to stay compatible.
Of course, sometimes that’s what it takes. SCADA, telemetry, cybersecurity — these need to be highly specialized and tested. But there’s so much room for innovation across the industry by adopting out-of-the-box digital solutions that cost a fraction of the price and take months, not years, to implement. These tools can transform everything from compliance to managing water level and quality, to customer service and more.
The key is to ensure your investments are being made with vision and purpose. A digital strategy will help you establish the problems that are worth solving and work backward to find the best solution. The great news is that you’ve already got a North Star: your customers. Whether you’re planning for today, five, or even 50 years from now, your decisions should be rooted in achieving the best outcomes for them.
A central strategy will also avoid having every department running in different directions to create a patchwork of less-than-perfect tech systems. You can’t do everything at once, so this strategy should prioritize four or five key areas of opportunity that are worth pursuing. Recognize that on the path to progress, some things can simply be good enough.
3. Give Power to Your People
Change can be scary, but the existential threat the industry is facing isn’t one of man vs. machine.
We must not think of innovation as software replacing jobs. Instead, it will give the incredibly talented scientists and engineers working in this industry the superpowers they’ll need to tackle the paramount problems we’re facing.
Consider this: today, AI can predict early-stage lung cancer before even the most highly trained radiologist can detect it on the scan. That’s a miracle and it doesn’t make the doctor’s role any less crucial. Quite the opposite: it gives them and their patients a fighting chance.
In the same way, digital technologies will fundamentally change the water industry. Imagine if we could prevent the next Flint crisis. That’s not just a future reality — it’s playing out today thanks to AI. It’s also a cautionary tale about what happens if we overlook these tools. Just as Flint was gaining momentum with a 70 percent lead pipe hit rate, it discarded its machine learning strategy, embarking on a new multi-million-dollar consulting job that sent the success rate plummeting to just 15 percent and leaving thousands of families still without safe water.
As an industry, we don’t have that kind of time to waste. Letting computers do what they do best will free up capacity so our experts and professionals can solve problems before they become disasters. Human capital is a precious resource that we can’t afford to waste on data entry and paperwork.
Following these three principles of innovation will help utilities overcome resource constraints as they work to transform their operations and tackle the challenges ahead. WW
About the Author: David Lynch is the CEO of Klir, a cloud-based task management platform that allows utilities to automate and digitize the thousands of manual tasks required to continually deliver safe and secure water.
