Every utility serves a unique customer base with its own water use and revenue generation patterns. Knowing its customers in detail helps a water provider customize policies and communication strategies not only for the customer base but also for smaller, targeted groups. This article introduces a relatively inexpensive way that utilities can use existing billing data to learn more about customer use patterns and applies this methodology at five North Carolina utilities. Developing smarter revenue and water use analytics that take into account changes in use behavior helps utilities be proactive in planning for resources changes (and the resulting financial implications) and be more effective in their communications and marketing. By moving away from engaging with residential customers as one homogeneous mass and instead treating them as groups of customers with distinct habits and values, utilities can use targeted messaging and outreach to bring customers on board with new policy rollouts.

By analyzing and tracking water use among nonresidential customers, utilities can project fluctuations in use over time and improve pricing schemes and business practices.

Installation of dedicated meters for residential irrigation systems, often called irrigation meters, can lead to unintentional consequences that may thwart a utility's intended purpose in promoting such meters. This article explores some of the financial and water use implications of separately metering and billing residential irrigation water under existing utility practices. The authors analyzed data on irrigation pricing and practices from 12 North Carolina utilities to draw generalizable observations about the effects of irrigation metering on customer expenditures and the inherent incentives on customer demand for irrigation meters and potential consequences on water use. This research found that water providers attempting to encourage water conservation by installing irrigation meters may be inadvertently providing incentives to increase irrigation water use. As they consider setting strategies and rates for their own irrigation‐metering initiatives, utility managers can use the lessons learned here to better integrate their water conservation policies with utility finances.