Vulnerability in motion: Support that evolves
How might we understand increasing customer vulnerability throughout a prolonged incident and provide effective, adaptive support that evolves as customer needs change?
Customer vulnerability is not static. During prolonged incidents, customer circumstances, risks, and support needs can change rapidly—requiring responses that evolve in real time.
At the 2026 Essex & Suffolk Water Innovation Festival, teams explored how NWG could provide more meaningful, reactive support for vulnerable customers during emergencies, focusing on prioritisation, triage, communications, and operational response.
This sprint will take those early ideas further.
Building directly on the outputs from the Essex & Suffolk Innovation Festival dash, this week-long sprint will expand and develop practical concepts into scalable approaches for NWG.
Together, we will:
- Explore how vulnerability changes during extended incidents and periods of disruption
- Develop smarter approaches to identifying and prioritising support needs in real time
- Examine how customers can communicate temporary or situational vulnerability more easily
- Design more meaningful support interventions beyond standard emergency responses
- Explore how operational teams, communications, and customer support functions can work together more effectively during live incidents
Participants will collaborate through immersive workshops, service design activities, and operational challenge sessions to:
- Review and build upon insights generated during the Essex & Suffolk Water Innovation Festival
- Map the evolving customer journey during prolonged incidents
- Explore triage models, reactive support pathways, and dynamic prioritisation approaches
- Co-design communications and support interventions tailored to changing customer needs
- Prototype operational and digital concepts that improve speed, compassion, and coordination
- Test ideas against realistic incident scenarios and escalation points
By the end of the sprint, we aim to deliver:
- A clearer framework for understanding and responding to evolving vulnerability during incidents
- Recommendations for improved triage, prioritisation, and reactive support processes
- Concepts for enabling customers to flag temporary or situational vulnerability more effectively
- A set of practical operational and communication interventions for live incidents
- A roadmap for piloting and scaling the most impactful ideas across NWG
- Customers, through more personalised and responsive support during emergencies
- Customer service and operational teams, with clearer approaches to prioritisation and coordination
- Incident management teams, through improved visibility of changing customer needs
- Communications teams, enabling more meaningful and targeted engagement
- The wider business, through stronger resilience, trust, and customer outcomes