• The unique data platform enables Northumbrian Water to understand customer satisfaction levels in near real-time through advanced analytics and predictive modelling

Milton Keynes and London—14 December 2021—Data specialist Aiimi has created a digital twin of customer experiences that maps and predicts customer satisfaction levels and behaviour with Northumbrian Water Group, allowing the utilities firm to deliver next-generation insights capabilities around customer journeys.

Developed over three years by a hybrid team of Aiimi and Northumbrian Water’s data science experts, the customer experience digital twin is a unique offering that enables Northumbrian Water to intelligently understand customer pain points in near real-time through advanced analytics. This allows the firm to quickly react to data-driven insights, improve customer journeys, and predict likely customer behaviour based on levels of satisfaction.

A key output of the customer experience digital twin is the C-MeX jeopardy score, which allows customer service agents to understand a customer’s level of satisfaction before direct contact is made. Aiimi developed this capability in direct response to the Customer Measure of Experience (C-MeX) standard introduced by OfWat at the beginning of the current AMP period (2020-2025), contributing to Northumbrian Water significantly exceeding its performance commitments.

Harnessing best-of-breed technologies, such as Azure Data Factory, Aiimi’s engineers created an advanced data infrastructure able to ingest information from Northumbrian Water’s Customer Relationship Management system, telephony systems, and direct customer feedback—provided through Rant & Rave—allowing agents to understand the specific business processes and interactions that led to a particular score. To process this data at scale, Aiimi implemented Databricks technology, allowing Northumbrian Water to understand feedback across its customer base of more than 2 million households, significantly improving reporting and analytics capabilities.

Michael Hull, Intelligence & Analytics Manager at Northumbrian Water, says, “When we think of a digital twin, we are inclined to think of detailed digital representations of physical assets and infrastructure. The customer experience digital twin applies this rigorous data-centric approach to improving how we operate as an organisation in response to customer feedback. Now, we can respond in near real-time to data-driven insights that reveal the true customer journey as well as understand how we align communications with the needs of individual customers. This equips our agents with the precise information they need to deliver unrivalled customer experiences.”

Following the successful implementation of the customer experience digital twin, Aiimi and Northumbrian Water have created further digital twins to help the organisation understand complex shifts in the way it has operated in the wake of the pandemic.

Using the architecture of the customer experience digital twin, the hybrid data science team consulted HR subject matter experts to understand the key challenges facing the firm, particularly around remote working and organisational resilience. This helped Northumbrian Water take an essential data-driven approach to human resources, helping it to quickly understand the implications of the pandemic for its workforce and implement new tools and practices to support employees.

Jack Lawton, Data Science Principal, Aiimi, says, “Working with Northumbrian Water’s data science team, subject matter experts, and against the firm’s performance commitments, we were able to establish clear objectives for delivering customer service excellence. Operating under an Agile methodology, we continually improved and upscaled the data platform, building out the capabilities of the digital twin to enable a self-service model. Today, employees across the organisation are able to quickly visualise data, instantly execute reports that once took days, and understand customer satisfaction levels with ease. The digital twin is the realisation of everything we at Aiimi aim to deliver for customers, which is an advanced data posture that interconnects information across an organisation and empowers users through data-driven insights.”