Driving Customer-Centric Change: WaterNSW’s Strategic Roadmap

Client: Water NSW

WaterNSW operates the state’s dams, capturing and storing water and then supplying it ready for distribution – for the environment, agriculture, industry, and the community. With 41 major dams and hundreds of waterways across the state, WaterNSW plays a vital role as the source of the state’s water, delivering two-thirds of all water used in NSW. WaterNSW is a State-Owned Corporation and one of the main government agencies tasked with managing water in NSW.

Challenge:

WaterNSW aims to enhance its customer-centricity to improve service delivery, build trust, and increase satisfaction among customers and key stakeholders. To achieve this, they conducted a customer-centricity maturity assessment to benchmark their performance against industry standards and identified key improvement opportunities.

Approach:

To improve customer centricity, we began with an in-depth assessment of WaterNSW’s current customer-centric maturity and identified the desired future state. This assessment revealed a range of opportunities, which we explored to determine the best initiatives for meaningful change.

Working closely with WaterNSW, we developed a four-year roadmap to close their customer-centric gaps and capitalise on their biggest opportunities to strengthen customer focus. The first two years of the roadmap emphasised the importance of change management and leadership to drive organisational alignment and employee engagement.

We also identified a range of initiatives across digital, technology, people, and processes to support the desired future state. To facilitate implementation, we proposed a test-and-learn approach coupled with 90-day planning cycles. This enabled the evaluation of strategic and tactical actions and supported focused progress toward customer-centric maturity.

Outcome:

By undergoing this assessment and planning the strategic roadmap, WaterNSW is positioned to enhance its customer-centric capability. The process has provided WaterNSW with:

An understanding of their current customer-centric performance and a defined target future state agreed upon by internal stakeholders.
Clarity on the key areas to focus on for improvement.
Guidance and prioritisation of initiatives to enable meaningful change.

By implementing these strategies over the next four years, WaterNSW aims to achieve its desired future state and attain long-term success in delivering improved customer experiences.

We extend our gratitude to Clear Advice & Strategy for their collaboration in the codesigning of the guiding principles outlined in this case study.