Energy Central: Cognizant’s Vice President of Energy and Utilities Says Delivering Digitally Powered Customer Engagement is an Imperative for Utilities

“For a growing population of consumers, the ease, efficiency and functionality of a utility’s web and/or mobile presence are becoming as critical in terms of customer service as receiving uninterrupted power, gas and water supplies,” writes John Gustafson. “These customers—a growing percentage of whom are utility customers—may soon equate “poor service” with an inability to manage their utility account from a smartphone. These changing expectations make digital customer engagement a critical area for capital investment by utilities.” Excerpts:

“It’s important to understand true digital engagement strategies are more than front-end interfaces: they also require rethinking and transforming processes, systems and practices. Services delivered from the cloud, big data analytics, social media and mobility are all powerful capabilities utilities may use to improve customer service while reducing costs by automating manual activity, integrating siloed data into one view and reducing call center volume. The same tools enable new service features, such as self-service portals and mobile access to account management tools, that are less expensive to deliver and maintain than traditional channels and further reduce a utility’s overall operating costs. Serving customers better becomes a path to operating the business more efficiently, too.

Consistency across channels: Continuity of data, process and interaction are critical service expectations for millennial customers who have been shaped by their interactions with other service providers. These customers expect the same information and functionality to be available across any channel. It’s important for utilities to deepen their capabilities here, not just to satisfy customers but to streamline underlying processes that might contribute to incongruent views of the customer appearing on different channels.

Big Data and Analytics: Utilities are missing the opportunity to use big data and analytics to transform and streamline internal operations and processes that also affect customer experience. Data collected from home metering devices can be analyzed to reveal usage patterns and pinch points that may help with load balancing, transformer maintenance, field distribution and demand forecasting. These insights aid in better business decision making that can improve service availability and heighten customer satisfaction.

Social networking: Utilities mainly use social channels like Facebook and Twitter to offer energy tips and to disseminate information on outages and emergency notifications. While those are useful applications, utilities also could take advantage of the opportunity to employ analytics on social media data. Social channels can be two-way conduits for information. Used in tandem with analytics, social “listening” can help utilities discern customer sentiment about a variety of issues—from service availability to perception of quality—and identify the influential voices in their social sphere. These insights can help utilities manage real business issues, such as communications to customers about major weather events.

Automation: Other industries such as banking and healthcare already are using robotic process automation (RPA) to automate completion of rote, repetitive processes and support customer service representatives. RPA can incorporate technology ranging from artificial intelligence to machine learning and intelligent code. Its capabilities could enable utilities to unify customer information across channels, provide comprehensive customer information in a single view and assist consumers in selecting energy plans, to name just a few possibilities.

Steps to take toward transforming your customers’ experience

Many business operations processes, especially among utilities, have a strong impact on customer satisfaction; transforming them leads to stronger business performance as well as increased customer satisfaction.  First steps toward digitally transforming customer engagement should include:

- Identify all customer touch points, engagement channels, processes and transactions. Review current business processes and systems.

- Inventory existing internal and customer-facing use of next-generation digital technology. Examine your company and employees’ own adoption rates of mobile and digital technologies.

- Develop a vision for improved customer service and set priorities aligned with customer demands for digital service.

- Finally, consider working with an experienced service provider who can deliver and manage proven process transformation and customer engagement frameworks.

Serving an increasing digitally demanding customer base is no small task and it comes with its own business and technology management challenges. Yet delivering digitally powered customer engagement is now an imperative.”

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