In the first installment of our five-party series, we highlighted the disconnect between North American utilities and the current utility customer. The old operating model – where utility performance was measured by reliability, outage reduction and capital efficiency – does not align with heightened customer expectations around personalization and complex inquiries. With customer experience (CX) metrics being used in rate-setting processes, it is imperative North American utilities reinvent the role of CX in their operations. Over our next two articles we will explore this theme in depth.
The experience gap in North American utilities is no longer about marginal underperformance. It is now a structural risk to customer loyalty, employee engagement, operational stability and increasingly a determining factor in regulatory outcomes.
To close the gap, cosmetic channel upgrades or digital interfaces layered onto legacy workflows will not suffice. The time has come for a holistic reinvention of how utilities create, deliver, and manage customer experience.
This reinvention hinges on six interconnected levers. Together, these levers form a blueprint for transforming centralized service delivery into decentralized, intelligent, and trustworthy energy partnerships.
When customers contact a utility for billing, service orders, or outage updates, they engage with the utility’s brand, not a channel. Every point of contact shapes trust and loyalty or erodes it.
Many customer journeys begin with frustration due to unintuitive navigation, malfunctioning chatbots, impersonal IVRs, and the absence of follow-up. Despite being a primary touchpoint for digitally proficient customers and reducing contact volumes – and the highest-rated channel for customer satisfaction – only 30% of utilities offer mobile applications.
The root cause lies in the design logic, not the channels. Utility CX has been implemented as a multifunctional solution rather than a journey-driven system. Customers are compelled to start afresh when switching channels, repeatedly having to explain the nature of their enquiry and ‘demanding’ service from a passive organization that should be anticipating their needs.
To break this cycle, it is imperative to reevaluate the digital CX stack, encompassing mobile applications and portals to IVRs and contact centers, through a human-centric, cross-channel journey perspective. The following key strategic shifts should be considered:
Utilities that minimize friction at the edge can reduce inbound contact, enhance first-contact resolution, shorten average handling time, and regain trust, particularly among digital-native customers. This is a measurable battleground, and commissions increasingly view metrics such as mobile adoption, call deflection and digital containment as indicators of modernized utility performance.
“A seamless first mile in digital engagement has transcended its status as a brand imperative. It has become an integral aspect of regulatory discussions and cost recovery calculations.” – Gartner, Predicts 2025: Navigating the Digital Nexus in Power and Utilities1
In the pursuit of automation, it is crucial to understand that customers seek human interaction when they’re concerned, confused, vulnerable or anxious. They need attentive listening, deep comprehension, and effective solutions.
However, the pace, context and precision of these interactions have increased. Utility contact centre agents, field technicians, and service representatives face mounting pressure to handle more inquiries, resolve issues faster, and personalize interactions more deeply, all while navigating complex systems and legacy workflows.
Without strategic investment, the human aspect of the utility experience can become a bottleneck or a liability. Employee burnout rises, resolution quality deteriorates, and customer experience suffers during critical moments.
The next frontier of customer experience reinvention must prioritize workforce empowerment, not just automation. The goal is to transform every frontline customer interaction into a high-precision, high-empathy moment – at scale.
Utility inquiries today are more complex, emotionally charged, and time-sensitive than ever. Customers are not just asking for balance summaries. They are navigating affordability pressures, outage anxieties, solar program confusion and shifting rate structures.
Cross-channel inquiries often lack history or context when passed between systems or departments. Agents toggle between multiple systems – including CIS, CRM, OMS and knowledge bases – while trying to resolve complex, often regulatory-compliant transactions. As a result, first-contact resolution rates remain inconsistent, and hold times continue to lengthen during peak disruptions. J.D. Power reports that over 35% of utility customers spend more than 15 minutes resolving routine inquiries, with satisfaction plummeting after just 10 minutes.2
This design failure is not an AI issue. Augmentation, powered by intelligent platforms and designed for the agent experience, is a force multiplier for the workforce, reducing call times and elevating agents from task takers to trusted guides.
Effective augmentation offers:
These capabilities enable agents to transition from reactive resolution to proactive service recovery and relationship strengthening, transforming challenging moments into opportunities for trust-building. Contact centers should no longer be seen as cost centers or complaint containment zones. They have evolved into utility’s brand delivery engines, providing customer insight and emotional connection.
However, structural barriers persist:
This model must transition towards one of enablement:
Augmented agents are not just a productivity strategy. As labor unions, regulators and oversight boards scrutinize AI in public service, utilities must prove that augmented intelligence enhances employees, not displaces them. This is especially important as utility commissions evaluate contact centre consolidation, staffing levels and taxpayer-funded platform investments, including workforce impact and service level equity.
Utilities should:
Agent augmentation enhances human judgment and empathy, making them more valuable assets supported by technology. Utilities that invest in this technology will experience faster call resolution, reduced churn, and increased brand affinity. This will also foster a culture where the front line is empowered, not overwhelmed, trusted, not transactional.
In the era of smarter grids and digital prosumers, a well-equipped, well-informed human voice can still be the greatest differentiator.
Utilities, long data-rich organizations that collect smart meter readings, outage reports, payment behaviors, and customer contact logs, remain insight-poor. They struggle to transform vast volumes of information into predictive, responsive and emotionally sensitive services.
This situation is unsustainable. Customers today expect personalized offers, proactive alerts, and real-time transparency that aligns with their usage, values, and intentions. Benchmark sectors like financial services and telecommunications have long employed behavioral segmentation, predictive analytics and dynamic pricing. Utilities lag not due to data scarcity but rather fragmented systems, inadequate governance and a lack of analytics-to-action pipelines.
Personalization does not begin with data science. It starts with audience empathy and an engine of continuous insight supported by well-governed data, analytics-aligned platforms, and business processes designed to change behavior rather than merely detect it.
Reinvention entails the following:
Baltimore Gas & Electric’s “Here to Help” initiative exemplifies the efficacy of behavioral segmentation.3 By linking usage and payment data, BGE proactively routed high-bill customers to relevant payment assistance and energy-saving programs. This resulted in reduced complaints, increased uptake, and the avoidance of service calls.
Across Ontario, New York and California, data-driven customer engagement is increasingly encroaching upon the domain of performance-based ratemaking. Boards now demand evidence that customer-facing rate designs and affordability programs are not merely available but are also meticulously targeted and adopted with the requisite supporting analytics to substantiate their effectiveness.
When applied judiciously, intelligence transforms into a powerful catalyst for fostering trust, enhancing customer satisfaction, and driving superior earnings performance.
Data strategy has transcended the confines of internal operations and is now subject to public scrutiny. Demonstrating tangible customer value derived from data analytics has swiftly become a prerequisite for rate adjustments.
Our next installment in this series will discuss the remaining three levers that will allow North American utilities to reinvent and differentiate: running as a digital utility, embedding trust and security by design, and co-creating with prosumers. North American utilities will need to act as a digital utility that bridges real-time data to end-users, in a secure and trusted manner while proactively redefining interactions with prosumers instead of only consumers.
References
1 https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/5987671
2 https://hub.jdpower.com/2024-us-utl-annual-report-download
3 https://www.utilitydive.com/spons/2025-utility-marketing-trends-meeting-the-needs-of-the-modern-customer/733790/
