The energy industry presents a host of unique challenges as companies strive to satisfy local customers in both regulated and unregulated markets. Far from being “just commodities,” utility providers can greatly impact customers’ satisfaction through customer service, utility service, communications, and marketing campaigns. Our utility clients credit CMI with helping them drive cultural change through their organizations by making information easily available to stakeholders and setting clear expectations. As a result, employees take personal accountability for their actions and achieving corporate customer satisfaction goals. CMI’s team has extensive experience helping utility companies better understand their customers, including concerns about service, pricing, climate, the environment, and more.
Success Stories

• Call Center Satisfaction and Performance Monitoring: Getting the 411 on the call center experience
• CMI conducts a continuous phone survey of over 20,000 customers of a Midwestern utility about their recent interactions with call center employees, including outsourced international call centers, to identify key drivers of customer satisfaction and the highest priorities.

  The result: using CMI’s WIN system, shared findings and Action Alerts with key stakeholders to identify opportunities for improvement and evaluate service standards.

• Customer Acquisition and Churn: Understanding why you gain or lose customers
• Two similar monitoring programs are regularly conducted to evaluate the attitudes, motivations, and behaviors of consumers who have recently switched to or away
  from a regional utility provider.

  The result: gather insights into gained and lost accounts to generate competitive advantages, and guide development of new promotional offers and marketing messages.

• Energy Audit Satisfaction and Contractor Performance: Auditing home audits
• CMI conducts a continuous customer satisfaction survey among customers who recently had an energy audit conducted for their home or business.

  The result: energy audit contractors are compensated based on tracked performance results; contractors’ performance and customers’ satisfaction have both improved.

• Immersive Ethnography to Evaluate Conservation: Figuring out what customers mean, not just what they say
• A multi-phased ethnographic study helped a regional electric and water utility evaluate consumers’ attitudes towards usage and conservation of resources.

  The result: identified the connections and contradictions between consumers’ stated values and actual behaviors towards these services, helping shape messages.

Learn More

“Energizing Culture Change” by Mike Mabey of CMI and Richard Mark of Ameren for Chief Learning Officer, June 2011

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