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ecent customer research data shows significant and permanent changes in the relationships that utilities have with their customers. Insights point to one big change that has already happened: Utility customers want to engage with energy companies that share their values; are industry leaders, not followers; and have a dedication to continuous quality. What is also abundantly clear is that customers believe utilities are responsible for understanding and proactively meeting their evolving expectations.
As utilities examine their customer goals, they may want to consider whether customer objectives have become stale or stalled. Do utilities want to simply satisfy their customers, or do they want to engage customers in a way that provides greater appreciation for the company, increases satisfaction scores, improves financial results and grows peer rankings?
On a recent webinar with EY, Escalent shared insights on how to succeed in the new world of utility customer expectations. Below are some insights to consider when developing customer management plans or setting forward-thinking customer goals in order to exceed those expectations. They incorporate changes to both customer touches and company culture:
Customers in our Cogent Syndicated research show a specific change in values that will greatly impact natural gas utilities in the near future. The graph below shows a significant and rapid shift among gas utility customers in their expectations, whereby industry leadership, social awareness and community focus have surpassed traditional satisfaction with service.
Escalent forecasts that over the next five years, these emerging expectations will be the dominant influencers of customers’ utility performance assessments. It is now clear that if your utility wants to excel at customer performance, you will need to look beyond customer satisfaction and start shifting your corporate goals and culture to engaging customers in your brand, values, outreach and innovative offerings.
Why is moving from satisfaction to customer engagement an immediate imperative? The bar graph to the upper right shows how customer engagement is front and center to meeting customer expectations and keeping them as part of your customer base.
Loyalty increases significantly when gas utilities meet and exceed customer expectations. The customer expectations chart indicates that the work utilities have conducted to engage their customers in local outreach, industry leadership and enhanced offerings will position them as companies that customers “want” to do business with instead of “have” to do business with.
Therefore, it is even more imperative for natural gas utilities to increase customer engagement with their brands and value-added offerings. Engaging customers effectively will make natural gas utilities preferred and trusted energy advisers.
Successful natural gas utility managers realize they are not going to gain customer loyalty and commodity preference by touting reliability, safety and a dedication to customer service, as electric peers have the same credibility. Utility customers are actually very happy with core service offerings for both electric and natural gas utilities. The goal now is to expand your perceptions with customers and become a preferred provider. Here are four foundational efforts utilities need to address:
Establish a customer engagement goal for your company. Having a more engaged customer base that uses your enhanced offerings and supports your management direction offers many financial and operational benefits. Every department has a stake in ECR, or the engaged customer relationship, whether it is back-office service, management or outreach. Working together on this goal leads to a team environment and improves corporate culture.
Focus on building brand trust among customers. Customer trust influences customer loyalty. Set a scoring goal of 700 or greater.
Tie community support and environmental dedication together as part of your brand identity. Customers who agree their gas utility supports the environment and their local community have significantly higher engagement as measured by ECR scores. Positioning your brand this way will increase revenue potential as these brand ideals are top reasons customers say they will support a rate increase.
Engage the business community for increased advocacy. When customers hear support from the business community, customer engagement increases 30 points. Outreach to the business community also builds business customer engagement.
The utility of the future is now, and utilities ranking among the industry’s elite are already taking their customer relationships to the next level. To engage today’s customers, utilities need to better plan for changes and create an environment for their employees to deliver on those expectations.