How Utilities Can Increase Their Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

Utility companies face many challenges every day, from preparing the power grid for the clean energy transition to safeguarding grids against severe weather and wildfires. In addition, the Ukraine/Russia conflict is causing energy prices to spike, so utilities like New York’s Con Edison are searching for ways to protect their customers from high prices and volatility. But one thing utilities should not have to deal with are low Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores. In this article, we’ll be diving into what exactly a customer satisfaction score is, why it matters, and how utilities can improve their scores.

What Is A Customer Satisfaction Score?

A customer satisfaction score or CSAT is essentially a customer satisfaction survey that measures a customer’s satisfaction with an organization (in this case, a utility). The score is calculated by asking questions about the customer’s experience, which is formatted into a survey scale that can range from 1-3, 1-5, or 1-10. While scores vary by industry, a good score is typically between 75-85%, with anything above 85% being stellar. Common CSAT questions include:

• What is your overall satisfaction with the utility?
• How well has the utility met your expectations?
• How does the utility compare with an ideal utility?

Why Does It Matter?

Your customer satisfaction score is important for several reasons. For one, it gives you hard data that alerts you how satisfied (or dissatisfied) your customers are with your services and programs. If you have a low CSAT score, this will let you know that you need to make improvements.

How to Increase Your CSAT Score

• Increase customer support: Your top priority should be having a good number of strong customer support staff to assist your customers with their questions about billing, usage, outages, and more.
• Add more channels for support: This could include installing chatbots on your website, having 24/hour support chats, or implementing a new, expansive phone menu.
• Make customers the center of your utility: Before you implement a new program or roll out a new service, ask yourself how it will benefit your customers. Better yet, take a customer survey to get feedback.
• Act on feedback: Don’t ignore any feedback, whether good or bad. Don’t delete comments off social media – respond to them with constructive answers instead. Consider having management sit down regularly to go over feedback and decide how you will act on it.
• Fix the pain points: Even if it’s inconvenient or costly, make sure you address customer’s pain points and fix them. Otherwise, you risk acquiring a negative public reputation for being unhelpful.
• Implement a customer engagement platform: This is perhaps the most important action you can take as a utility. A customer engagement platform provides utilities with competitive differentiation through digital transformation and the insights needed to identify new services and programs. It also enables utilities to engage their customers with compelling and personalized energy and sustainability data. The result is a heightened customer satisfaction score.

How WatchWire Can Help

WatchWire’s web-based Customer Engagement Platform offers these features and more:

• Invoice Data Consolidation automated from utility websites, including portfolio consolidation, multiple currency tracking, and unit conversions
• Customizable dashboards with high-level views of your customer’s personalized KPIs and analytics
• Portfolio comparisons
• Sustainability management
• Measurement and verification
• Peak load management

To learn more about the benefits of a customer engagement platform, download our whitepaper, “What to Look for in a Customer Engagement Platform.”

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