Ten Essential Criteria to Choose a Future-Ready CX Platform

Last month, I published an article on Forbes called Utilities: Can Your CX Platforms Handle Today’s Energy Revolution in which I examined the foundational role CX plays in utility business operations -– from marketing and call centers to program planning and grid management.

Writing the article got me thinking about how, with so much at stake, choosing a CX platform has become both increasingly mission-critical and more complex at the same time. It’s one of a utility’s most important strategic exercises, and can quickly become overwhelming in the face of high internal expectations and the competing claims from each CX solution — each promising to do more than the competitors to boost utility-customer relationships.?

In such a crucial and crowded space, how can you ensure you’re choosing the optimal solution for your utility business, today and into the future?

In my view, there are 10 criteria that you can rely upon to guide the solution evaluation process.

Criteria 1: Advanced Disaggregation for Meaningful Intelligence

The most sophisticated disaggregation solutions break down total energy consumption data on a device category or device-by-device basis and at a daily, weekly, monthly, or bill cycle frequency.?

Why is this important to CX?? Because these insights empower both utilities and their customers with personalized appliance-specific energy use data that creates a foundation for meaningful, relevant engagement.

→ With that in mind, look for CX solutions that can provide itemized energy reports for every customer, every month. The energy itemization should include all major end-use categories (typically 8-12). TOU insights should also be provided for the primary electric loads, including water heating, pool pump, electric vehicles, air conditioning, and space heating. For maximum accuracy, the energy itemization should be based on customer-specific AMI data at 15-60 minute intervals, and not static models applied to large customer segments.?

In addition, as AMI deployments continue to advance, look for solutions that can create a seamless customer experience (disaggregated usage, alerts, etc.) through the transition from non-AMI infrastructure to smart meters to demonstrate that AMI infrastructure benefits utility operations and the grid as well as consumer comfort and convenience.?

Criteria 2: Personalized Insights for Higher CSAT

Effective personalized engagement and better CX start with creating a holistic and accurate 360° energy use profile of every customer. Generic insights don’t resonate in a relevant, timely, or actionable manner.? They leave customers unhappy and dissatisfied with their utility, which impacts the bottom line with low program participation and rising call-ins, complaints and cost to serve.?

→ Look for CX solutions that deliver 360° customer profiles for every customer that are informed by meter data and analyses and enriched by other supporting data inputs. Look for platforms capable of continuously improving and personalizing these insights as customers go about their daily lives and engage with the utility over time. And look for a built-in feedback module in all customer communications that collects customer input to refine personalization and allows the voice of the customer to be heard.?

Criteria 3: Customer Empowerment to Enable Self-Service

The most advanced CX platforms empower customers with appliance-specific, hyper-personalized recommendations that allow them to take meaningful and immediate action and feel good about doing so.?

→ Look for CX solutions that differentiate between inefficiencies driven by user actions versus inefficiencies driven by appliance conditions. It’s also essential to be able to highlight which appliances contribute to home-level inefficiencies and to empower users to focus on the appropriate appliances for maximum return on their efforts and money spent.

Criteria 4: Bill Insight and Analysis Tools to Improve Billing Understanding

Providing customers with self-service and omnichannel bill analysis tools (i.e. web portal + email alerts) can help customers better understand their bills and how to take steps that have a meaningful impact on their energy costs.?

Proactively providing these insights helps to transform utility bills from a dreaded? communication that lands in the mailbox at the end of the month into a valuable communication that invites engagement. This shift in perception improves overall customer experience and satisfaction and reduces high-bill call volume and cost to serve.?

→ Look for CX solutions that provide bill analyses that enable customers to compare billing periods, as well as monthly summaries with bill itemization, accurate bill forecasts, and proactive high usage alerts. Look for TOU rate design and management tools. Look for solutions that provide customers with data-driven, personalized explanations as to what contributed to a bill increase/decrease, including changes in appliance-specific usage, the difference in the number of days in the billing cycle or weather.

Criteria 5: Cross-Promotion to Increase Participation

When energy use data is established as a single source of truth, traditionally siloed operational areas can collaborate to deliver customer insights and recommendations that promote a wide range of programs and offerings, including energy efficiency and DSM, solar, energy assistance, appliance rebates, weatherization, LED upgrades, water conservation and more.

→ Look for CX solutions that granularly target customers with personalized and relevant messaging to promote the full range of utility programs/products. Ensure that recommendations are directly aligned to each customer’s home energy profile and personalized appliance-level energy consumption as identified by disaggregated meter data. Confirm that the solution presents a clear value proposition to every customer as to why they have been selected for specific program, product, or service recommendations.

Criteria 6: Support for Customers’ Decarbonization & Electrification Transition?

In order to achieve a shift in the magnitude of transportation and home electrification, it’s essential to implement personalized marketing that aligns with each customer’s needs, motivations. It also requires a deep understanding with time-of-use granularity as to how customers use electricity and which technologies they’ve adopted.

→ Look for CX solutions capable of providing customers with education about their carbon emissions in the context of their energy consumption and metrics by which to track them.? Look for CX platforms capable of identifying which customers have already electrified their transportation and providing accurate insights about their at-home charging behaviors. This intelligence enables utilities to better roll out charging rebates and time-of-use offers and encourage sustained engagement throughout a customer’s EV journey. Also look for support strategies for solar users with the ability to detect solar generation and reflect the net-metered amounts for a fair representation of the customer’s usage. And finally, look for customer engagement strategies that promote appliance electrification in an intelligent and hyper-personalized way to align with each consumer's unique energy habits and needs.

Criteria 7: Digital Engagement to Reduce Cost to Serve

Utilities have historically moved slowly in offering the individualized digital capabilities that consumers now expect. CX solutions that deliver equally powerful outcomes across both traditional and digital channels better enable digital transformation, and provide a more successful path to meet today’s CX standards.?

→ Look for CX tools that can improve the personalization capabilities of both web portals and mobile apps and that provide a mechanism to seamlessly transition customers from non-digital channels to digital.?

Criteria 8: Seamless Technology Integration for Ease of Implementation

When it comes to selecting or upgrading your CX platform, there are a lot of stand-alone solutions claiming that the value of their platform comes from replacing multiple existing systems in your IT stack. That can be a daunting prospect — both in terms of the cost and the timeline required for a multi-system IT migration.

I’d argue that it’s better to go with a platform that supercharges your existing IT capabilities to get the most out of the IT investments you’ve already made, and to ensure all technology platforms utility-wide are operating with the same single source of truth as their foundation.

Look for flexible solutions that make it easy to infuse customer intelligence into diverse IT systems using widgets and APIs. API integration enhances a utility’s native digital properties with personalized energy insights. Widgets allow a utility to embed new CX features within existing web portals.

Criteria 9: Call Center Support for CSRs Empowerment

While utilities continue to expand the role of online and mobile channels as a point of contact and extend self-service options, the call center currently remains the primary channel for customer support. Empowering CSRs with customer intelligence helps them shorten call duration, limit call escalation, reduce call volume and improve customer satisfaction while serving as a trusted advisor.

→ Look for CX solutions that provide a call center tool to assist CSRs in answering bill-related customer queries most efficiently by providing a detailed view into the individual factors that contributed to a bill increase/decrease. Look for solutions that enable CSRs to track and view all communications sent to customers previously. And if you have invested in Salesforce and SAP, look for CX solutions that enrich that investment and don’t require an additional tool setup for your CSRs.?

Criteria 10: Proven Track Record to Build Confidence

It goes without saying, but reputation, demonstrated experience, and proven outcomes are essential elements of vendor comparison.

Analysts’ reports can play an invaluable role in this assessment, providing nuanced comparison tools across vendors and helping to differentiate what sets each vendor apart. Intellectual property is also a useful metric to evaluate how much emphasis a vendor is placing on R&D and pioneering data science approaches to better foster CX. Consider also the breadth and scale of a vendor’s deployments and quantitative customer outcomes as reliable indicators of solution excellence.?

→ Look for measurable outcomes, case studies, and third-party validations. Don’t hesitate to ask around to learn first-hand about how your utility peers have leveraged a specific vendor or technology.?

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I hope these criteria help you navigate the crowded CX space, and choose a platform that empowers you to meet tomorrow's grid demands today. If you’re interested in exploring these criteria further, my team used this list as a jumping off point to write a more in depth Playbook For Building A Customer Experience 2.0 Platform that is available for download. Take a read and let me know your thoughts!