All customers want safe and reliable energy and water, but their values diverge after that. For example, McKinsey described the different residential utility customer attitudes about energy efficiency.* Their research uncovered five categories of customer attitudes:

1. “Green-advocates, who care about energy-saving behavior as a goal in its own right.” Utilities should talk to them about new technologies and environmental benefits.
2. “Traditionalist cost-focused energy savers,” who are, “entirely motivate[d] by saving money…” Utilities should talk to them in terms of saving money.
3. “Home-focused selective energy savers primarily seek home improvement, which may include a technological and cost-saving dimension….”  Utilities should communicate with them in terms of home improvements and home value. They should couch financial information in terms of longer investments.
4. “Non-green selective energy savers, are happy to save energy as long as they don’t have to think about it—they like ‘set and forget’ ” Utility communications should discuss financial benefits, but also emphasize ease, automation and the ways the utility offers help with setup, configuration, automation, etc.
5. “Disengaged energy wasters,” don’t, “care about saving energy, saving money,… new technologies, [or] the environment.” Utilities should strive to learn more about their disengagement and to move them up to a more engaged category.

Source: David Frankel, Stefan Heck & Humayun Tai. “Using a consumer-segmentation approach to make energy-efficiency gains in the residential market,” McKinsey & Company 2013 p. 4.

Utilities need to tailor the customer experience using customer data. One-size-fits-all won’t work for communications anymore. Customer interests differ. It’s not that hard to look at this graph and think of communications that will delight one group, and annoy, or escape notice by, others.

With Brilliency, utilities personalize communications based on customer interactions

Brilliency provides data from a utility's customers based on their preferences, behavior and interactions. We remove the customer experience blindfold imposed by legacy utility business models and outmoded utility communication channels. We allow utilities to communicate with each customer in terms of actual interests and values. We can help utilities engage customers based on their environmental, technological, financial or other interests and values — and ones unique to your customers. See how.