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Insights from our industry panel and expert commentators
Insights from our industry panel and expert commentators
Delivering seamless digital experiences is central to ensuring customers can access services and support, whenever necessary. As outlined in the figures from the Institute of Customer Service (ICS), the majority (68.9%) of consumer interactions with their utilities take place through digital channels. So, getting the digital journey right has never been more important.
However, worryingly, most representatives on Utility Week’s industry panel felt their current digital offering has significant room for improvement.
According to 75%, their digital service is average to very poor when compared with other sectors. Though when asked how their offerings compared to peers within the sector, participants were more bullish, with half saying they felt their offering was “very good” in contrast to other utilities.
So, why is there such a marked difference between digital experience standards in utilities and other sectors? According to Charles Marcus’s Martin Ridley, it’s a matter of investment power.
“I have spent some time working in the green tech area, particularly around sustainability reporting and also the energy transition. When you look at companies like Tesla, for example, versus traditional organisations, they can raise funds more easily and invest in sustained, long-term digital innovation,” he says.
“A lot of these traditional companies [like utilities] just do not have that level of investment that would enable them to make those kind of commitments to transform and become a truly digital organisation.”
Legacy organisations
As well as investment constraints, utilities often face legacy issues around siloed data and systems, which can hamper their delivery of a seamless digital experience for customers.
Ridley explains that billing and payments, for example, should be “fairly straightforward” but often become mired in bureaucracy and disjointed processes.
“If you speak to a customer about their utility bill, on the surface they see it as very simple,” he says. “However, when you start to explore the intricacies of billing programmes, there is a layer of complexity for the edge cases – perhaps 5% of customers – which actually makes the digital journey quite challenging a lot of the time.”
Companies that perform well, Ridley says, tend to have a strong understanding of which personas are relevant to which customers. “That allows the company to direct the customer through the correct digital channels, ensuring that they are responding to the particular needs of the customer at that point,” he explains.
“That is where digital channels should be most effective. But a failure to utilise your systems from the perspective of ‘what is the customer need?’ and ‘how do we most efficiently and effectively manage that into back-end operations?’ is where I have seen the biggest challenges for utilities. Typically, that failure leads to the digital journey not delivering the value it should for customers.”
Despite this concern, there is reason for optimism. When asked about their best digital offerings overall, meter read submissions were identified by 56% of respondents. This was closely followed by making payments (44%) and general account management (31%).
Digital improvements and challenges
With respondents clear that they are lagging behind other sectors when it comes to their digital offering, our survey asked them to identify specific improvement areas for their organisation.
The most important areas are considered to be tailoring payment arrangement for personal circumstances (identified as a priority area for improvement by 50%), general account management (50%), and consumption monitoring (44%).
Which aspects of digital experience are being prioritised for improvement?
Improving digital platforms to support customers’ consumption monitoring was highlighted as the most important issue for 56% of water respondents.
However, 75% of energy retailers were more focused on the need to facilitate tailored payment arrangements.
Said one executive from an energy retailer: “The most important thing is ensuring that everything is clear, understandable and accessible for all customers.”
According to more than 9 in 10 survey participants, improving the ability of customers to manage their account on-the-go is rated as the top outcome of digital service improvements. Jointly ranked in second place – by 87% of respondents – are increasing opportunities for customers to self-serve and reducing operational costs.
However, one water executive warned that utilities should be cautious about how they use their digital platforms to increase engagement and opportunities for customers to self-serve.
“There are obviously huge benefits – there is lots of excitement across the sector around the usage of data, for example, to drive customer engagement,” they said. “But there is a lot of noise and not enough detail. All too often, we want to give customers more data or more control, without necessarily trying to help them understand why it is useful and how they can use it to resolve their queries.”
According to the survey, the most significant challenge to delivering improvements to digital service offerings is perceived to be legacy technology. Almost two thirds of respondents (67%) identified this as the biggest barrier for their organisation.
What are the biggest blockers to improving the digital experiences offered by utilities?
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