As younger generations grow up, they bring new expectations to their relationships with energy providers. Many energy and utility companies are embracing technology like digital platforms, personalized marketing, and integrated innovative home technology to keep up.
Customers today want fast, convenient self-service options and personalized experiences. Energy companies are embracing customer experience (CX) tools to meet these demands.
Customer Self-Service
For many consumers, being well cared for by an electric company in Midland, Texas, is just as important as the quality of a product or service. This is true for electricity customers, as 61% say being well cared for by an electric utility is critical to their satisfaction with the company.
Providing self-service options for basic queries is no longer a nice but a must-have for energy providers. This can include a knowledge base, FAQs page, chatbots, or interactive voice responses that respond to simple questions.
In addition, tracking current customer support requests and analytics can help you develop a more personalized self-service system that helpfully answers common questions to the user. Keeping up with frequently searched terms on search engines like Google can provide additional insight into the problems users are trying to solve and the kinds of solutions they want to see from your organization.
With a clear understanding of what their customers want, utilities can begin to take action. This is especially important for utilities with lower customer satisfaction levels, as those companies may be more vulnerable to disrupters with a superior customer experience. In these cases, a broad improvement program addressing multiple factors (Options 1, 2, and 3) can deliver significant results, including reduced customer churn.
Convenience
The utility industry is highly skilled at managing large capital projects and operating complex grids on a 24/7 basis. However, our research shows that many utility executives feel less confident when building and using their organizations’ ” software ” — developing a customer-centric culture focused on continuously improving customer experience.
Achieving this requires a deep understanding of customer’s needs and preferences and deploying the technologies that best meet those needs. This includes new apps and digital platforms, innovative home technology, and personalized marketing. Many energy companies, such as Amazon, Southwest Airlines, and Netflix, are taking cues from leading customer-focused firms outside the utility sector.
Consumers are interested in various energy-related programs and services but often need help navigating the upfront costs. Developing creative, low-risk ways to help consumers manage these initial financial investments (such as on-bill financing or Pay As You Save) can increase participation.
Convenience is one of the most essential elements in a positive customer experience. Utility companies can boost customer satisfaction by focusing on comfort and prioritizing technologies that offer it while reducing operational expenses. This is especially important for utilities in developing countries, where a poor public image can result in the vandalism of power infrastructure and the normalization of a nonpayment culture.
Personalized Marketing
In today’s crowded business environment, personalized marketing is a powerful way to build meaningful connections with customers and achieve better results. But if you want to make your personalization efforts count, it starts with the proper data foundation.
That’s why energy providers increasingly leverage technologies such as data analytics and digital platforms to create a customer-centric experience beyond the traditional utility-customer relationship. In addition, many energy companies are partnering with technology companies to offer smart devices like smart thermostats and intelligent speaker-based products that allow consumers to manage their electricity use more quickly and efficiently.
Moreover, the power of AI is ushering in an era of highly personalized customer experiences. Whereas marketers used to rely on broad demographic targeting—such as male-female, 18-35, urban-rural—AI allows businesses to target their messaging to the exact person they’re speaking with.
The result is a more engaging and relevant customer experience that builds brand loyalty. For example, Nike uses a personalized approach to marketing by offering customized sneakers that align with each customer’s needs and preferences. This 1:1 personalization creates a more effective and memorable connection with customers, driving increased sales and brand loyalty. Similarly, energy providers can use personalization to help customers save money by providing targeted energy savings offers based on the unique characteristics of each customer.
Automation
Whether dealing with electricity providers or government agencies, customers want to interact with public services as quickly as with retail stores and restaurants. But the influx of new technology makes this goal increasingly difficult for some utilities to achieve, causing them to look for solutions.
One solution is automation. Successfully implemented, it eliminates errors caused by fatigue or inattention by replacing manual processes with streamlined, automated ones. This ensures that citizens’ service experiences are free of the flaws that sometimes arise from human frailties and allows employees to spend more time focusing on other aspects of their jobs.
The key to success is incorporating automation into an end-to-end customer experience strategy. Utility leaders who take this approach focus their automation efforts on three drivers that matter most to customers: simplicity, reliability, and consistency. They also incorporate a customer-centric mindset into their change management strategies to minimize resistance from employees and customers.
For example, by automating gathering information to answer customers’ questions on a single channel, an energy provider saves employees time and allows them to focus on more valuable work—such as providing personalized answers to customer inquiries. For instance, Oracle Intelligent Advisor (OIA) is an AI platform that uses data to deliver customized answers to energy consumers.
