Changes in online customer behaviour has had huge implications on what customers now expect from the brands and service providers they do business with. In fact, the customer experience (CX) is now crucial for retaining highly-satisfied customers.
This is no different for utility providers, which now must become CX-centric or risk falling behind the rest of the world.
“Utility companies face a high bar in meeting new customer expectations. Customers are increasingly both consumers and producers – now expecting to be a click, swipe, or voice command away from a seamless and personalized human experience,” reads a Deloitte report on the utility customer of the future.
The report found that utility consumers are increasingly expecting a data-driven experience that offers personalized experiences, such as consumptions analytics. In fact, 55 percent of utility customers are interested in time-of-use rates.
While some utility providers may panic when keeping up with these customer experience changes, other utility providers have realized that they represent an opportunity to go that extra step to exceed customer expectations.
Why utility customer experience represents a huge opportunity for utility providers
As with most other industries, the ever-changing customer expectations have meant utility providers have had to dramatically shift the way they deliver their services and engage with their customers. The implementation of new technologies is now crucial to customer satisfaction.
This represents a massive opportunity for utility providers. Those able to keep up with these changes are able to realize improved customer engagement, a happier customer base and bi-directional y dialogue that benefits both the customer and the utility.
What are today’s customers expecting from your utility?
Customers today want everything they’ll ever need from your utility in one centralized location. That means no more paper bills sent to their home, no more travelling to an office to pay their bills and no more time-consuming calls (unless it’s a truly complex question) to your customer service team.
Instead, customers want to track their utility usage, seamlessly pay their bills, find answers to their questions, review outage updates, easily change their customer information and much more – all from either a website or mobile application.
How can your utility make the most of this customer experience opportunity?
Digital platforms, such as the silverblaze Customer Portal for Utilities, have improved communications between the utility and their customer, as well as created a seamless flow of data transactions that’ve empowered customers to answer their own questions to reduce strain on CSRs and many more benefits.
A digital customer portal allows your customers to pay their bills through eBilling, receive direct notifications and alerts for improved communication, and view detailed analytics of tiered and simple consumption data that can help reduce costs and their environmental footprint.
What’s to lose? Nothing! A utility customer portal will truly improve your relationships with customers and position your utility up there with some of the best customer experience-performing brands in the world.
Do you want to learn more about the opportunity presented by utility customer portal technology? Get in touch with silverblaze today. We would love to discuss, and show you a demo of our award-winning utility self-service technology.
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