Aclara, a provider of consumer-engagement solutions for utilities, will open and close Chartwell Inc.'s EMACS Customer Experience conference on Oct. 26 to 28 in Orlando, Fla., with sessions that bring together industry leaders and consumer-engagement experts.
In the opening general session, Aclara will present “How Human Behavior Influences Change That Improves the Utility Website User Experience.” Meena Kothandaraman, adjunct professor at Bentley University, will deliver the results of the extensive research on improving how people use utility websites, which Aclara recently conducted with graduate students at Bentley.
Aclara’s product management Vice President Andy Zetlan will join Kothandaraman in discussing how utilities can combine technology, product design and an understanding of human behavior to improve the user experience on websites.
In the closing session, Aclara will lead a blue-ribbon, smart-grid industry panel involving Kothandaraman and three additional industry experts: Alan Destribats, vice president and advisor to the Energy and Smart Grid Practice; Robert M. Geneczko, vice president of customer services at PPL Electric Utilities; and Mark Johnson, co-founder and vice president of the Intelligent Utility Div. of Energy Central. Zetlan will moderate the session.
The panelists will define the roadmap for advanced consumer engagement, will discuss how utilities are improving in this area and will provide a vision of what the future might look like from each panelist’s perspective.
“We are actively moving further from an engineering-centric way of doing business to an experience-centric way of doing business,” explains Kothandaraman. “Engaging our customers allows us to design more meaningfully for the individual, such that product design correlates ROI to customers’ behaviors, motivations and needs.”
Source: Aclara