Changing customer needs and how to find them

Changing customer needs and how to find them

By Dan Gent

Customer loyalty is the consumers' commitment to a business and repeatedly purchase the services or products.How that strategy is created, varies based on the industry, the business itself and the resources available.

But, what if you have a product that everyone needs access to, like electricity? How far should the company go to enhance the customer experience and customer loyalty when you know your product is essential to modern everyday life, and the only company to provide it?

Obtaining customer loyalty in an industry that is effectively a monopoly can prove challenging. The use of a customer 360-degree view is a tool that can provide insight into the customer to better serve them, with the quality services and products that they need and want from utilities.

In a 360-degree view, the information comes from data collected from all customer/company touch points. For example, electricity providers can examine everything from how the customer pays their bill, to when they charge their electric vehicle, to understanding if they work from home.

Even though there is an effective monopoly, there are growing competitors in the industry. Customers can go off-grid and build their energy solutions with solar panels and batteries. In addition, customers are being introduced to home energy management solutions such as the Google Nest.

What can utilities do?

1. Positive employee interactions
   1. Positive employee interactions are incredibly important to establish and maintain customer loyalty. Engaged employees will go the extra mile for the company and ensure the brand is viewed positively by the customer. Call centre representatives, lineworkers, and meter readers all impact the customer in various ways, so employees who may interact with customers must be trained accordingly.
2. Provide high quality products and services
   1. High-quality services and products and offer features that meet the customers' needs and wants. By analyzing the needs of the customer base, they can develop products and services to help ensure customers' standards are met and they are satisfied.
3. Customer loyalty and customer engagement
   1. Customer loyalty and engagement strategies will most likely succeed and grow and retain their existing customers to a greater extent than companies that don’t. Collecting all the information that is needed to maintain solid customer insights will require a great amount of data. Data that is available in utility information management systems.

To be prepared for the increasingly digital future, utilities will be required to understand the customer and their changing needs as well as maintaining a positive relationship with them. Adopting a 360-customer view, is the tool to begin this process.

To learn more about a 360-degree customer view of the industry, see the report here.

Kotler, P., Keller, K. L., & Chernev, A. (2021). Marketing Management (16th ed.). Pearson Education (US). https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9780135887035