How to Set Up Omnichannel Utility Customer Experiences

Now more than ever, the people in your community are hyper-connected to each other and the world. Technology is making that happen, and businesses are using it to their advantage. To benefit from this connectivity, utilities must know what software and platforms their communities use and how to use them successfully to provide the best omnichannel utility customer experiences.

What Is an Omnichannel Utility Customer Experience? 

It used to be enough for you to offer only an analog way to stay connected with your community. Office hours, a drive-up window, and even a drop box, were all you needed. Then along came technology, the internet, and even COVID, and utilities found they needed to transform digitally to keep pace with other service providers.  In short, consumers were looking for what big box stores and online services could provide—to be served when,  where, and on whatever device they chose.  

Omnichannel customer experiences for utilities mean you provide an analog and digital way to interact.  Websites, social, video, self-service, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and outage management are all options that utilities should explore to determine what works best for their communities.  Giving your customers the option to select how they want to interact with you makes you more proactive to their needs and less reactive. So when an outage happens or a bill needs to be paid, your customers hear from you as quickly as possible so they can take action without waiting for office hours.

How Do You Set Up an Omnichannel Experience for Your Customers? 

To set up omnichannel experiences for your community, you must know where they live online. Once you know what social media is preferred, if they will use your website to make payments on your portal, and what software you need to provide more channels to connect with your community, you’ll have everything you need for exceptional customer experiences in the digital age. A few channels to consider are

• Social Media

• Self-Serve Portal

• Personalize Video

• Mobile Workforce Management Software (MWM)

• Outage Management (OMS)

• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

• Bill Payment Kiosks

Why Is Social Media an Important Channel for Utilities? 

Your community has a great deal of power now that their voices can be amplified on social media sites. Although you provide exceptional customer service, it only takes one bad experience for a customer to turn to social media and share that message with the world. In fact, people are 2 times more likely to share a bad experience than a good one.  

Because social media is near real-time, monitoring and using your channels to share information with your customers is essential. Being active on social appears to be time-consuming, and you may think you don’t have enough hours in the day. But if you schedule 15 minutes daily to monitor your social community, it becomes an enjoyable way to interact with the people you serve. Because many social media platforms allow you to pre-post your content, you can even reduce your posting time by using this feature. And when you need to share information about an outage or planned maintenance, you’ll have an audience who wants to hear from you.

Why Use a Self-Service Channel? 

Self-service is like having an extra customer service representative working for you 24/7 that helps your customers when and where they want to be served. Instead of waiting until Monday morning to pay a bill, with a self-serve portal, your customers can log in on a phone or tablet and pay while sitting in their living rooms when and where they are comfortable.  Or they can drive or walk up to a bill payment kiosk and make a payment throughout the day.  

When you provide self-service channels to your community, you give them the means to take charge of their accounts. A web portal lets them make payments, view past statements, and initiate move-ins and move-outs. They can even take responsibility for their consumption by monitoring their usage. And with a kiosk, they can decide how and when they want to pay.

How Can Video Serve Your Community?

Up until recently, utilities used video to share generic messages with their communities. Now, technology has given us a way to personalize video and provide an immersive experience where your customers can interact with you.  SmartVx video engagement software works with NorthStar CIS to pull personalized billing information and share it with your customers. Each customer sees only what’s related to their bill, explaining bill changes, asking them to sign up for paperless billing, and even encouraging them to use your self-serve portal. 

The advantage of using this channel to engage your customers is that it reaches more of them.  The average utility bill explanation is written at a 9th-grade level and takes an average reader 6 minutes to read it. Although your explanation is thorough, many in your community cannot understand it. They may not have the ability to comprehend at that level, speak a different language than what you wrote it in, or have an impairment that prevents them from being able to read it.  Although you hope that your message will be received, what often ends up happening is that your CSRs spend several days fielding the same phoned-in or emailed questions.  

Personalized video changes how you interact with your community. When you use SmartVx, they get a personalized message in a format they can understand. Personalized video improves customer satisfaction and collections and decreases call volume because your community receives the information they need when and where they need it in a format that’s easy to digest.

Adding engaging channels to your customer service helps your team provide exceptional customer experiences. When customers can interact with you through analog and digital means, you allow them to select how they want to be served, putting them first in line on whatever channel they choose. And keeping these channels open provides a proactive approach to customer service, making for informed and happy customers. 

Looking for a way to provide an omnichannel customer experience for your utility? Contact our sales team today.