Increased focus on ESG helps utilities improve customer engagement

Utility customer engagement has grown owing to an increased focus on environmental sustainability and consumer-centric business models during the pandemic, according to a new report released by Escalent.

The increase in customer engagement, in turn, helps utilities to grow company value and influence the behavior of consumers, states the 2021 Cogent Syndicated Utility Trusted Brand & Customer Engagement Residential study.

Out of a scale of 1000, utility customer engagement has grown by eight points to 721 since pre-pandemic levels in 2019, according to the study

Engaged customer relationships have improved as a result of proactive outreach by utility companies. The study found an increase in communication spending by 23% since 2019.

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Of the communication done by utilities, 73% of the topics communicated were around environmental, social and governance issues.

The study also highlights that utilities’ increased spending has paid off with 36% of customers now highly engaged with their energy providers, 33% are now using energy efficiency services offered whilst 63% are using digital and smart energy services and 16% revenue-generating services.

One area of focus for continued growth in customer engagement is more effective communication in suburban and rural areas. While urban areas have grown customer engagement by a large 19 points since 2019 and now have an average ECR score of 745, suburban (711) and rural (705) customers score their utilities much lower.

Chris Oberle, senior vice president at Escalent, said: “What makes the gains in customer engagement most impressive is it strengthened despite increasing bill amounts as service satisfaction metrics remained similar to prior years.

“Utilities have ramped up their outreach and ESG focus during the pandemic and the positive impact on their customer relationships was almost immediate. The nation’s best utilities are strong and engaging brands customers look to as trusted energy advisers.”

The study is based on a survey of customers of 140 electric and natural gas utilities in the US. Find out more about the study.