Indoor heating, like many other modern home conveniences, came from the Romans. Modern chimneys first became a part of the home in the United Kingdom in the 1600s, when coal became a mainstream fuel. The patent for the first thermostat was filed i...

What strategies can you apply to attract early adopters when your utility comes out with a new product or service?   In some cases, giving things away encourages action: just about this time last year, Reliant gave away 10,000 free home energy ...

Earlier this year J.D. Power and Associates released its 2012 Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study, basing ratings on several factors: power quality and reliability, price, billing and payment, corporate citizenship, communicat...

The Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC) “brings together commercial, utility, and advocacy organizations to work toward a common goal of accelerating the adoption of a smart grid that is consumer-friendly, consumer-safe, and consumer-approved...

Recently, Accenture hosted a webinar discussion about doing more with less, which included Steve Anderson, contributing editor to Public Utilities Fortnightly and Joan Shafer, senior vice president for Customer Services at We Energies, which provi...

How do you measure customer engagement? I mean, what really makes for an “engaged” consumer in utilities? As Accenture’s most recent new energy consumer study reports, “Consumer satisfaction, engagement and loyalty are complex and intertwined. Und...

In another U-Blog, we talked about how some utility customers would be willing to pay more to get more in the way of faster service, more control and automation, and better access to alternative forms of energy. We also discussed that by no means ...

Homes expend energy and dollars on heating, cooling, water heaters, appliances, and lighting (pretty much in that order) and, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, various tactics can drop the average annual home energy costs by as much as 5...

Do you ever have those moments in workplace communications where you are e-mailing someone and begin to wonder if a phone call wouldn’t be better? Or, you pick up the phone, only to put down the receiver and walk across the hall or building for a ...

How does a utility connect with customers on their terms? When do customers want to see or speak with you, and when would they rather help themselves via the increasing power of consumer technology, like smartphones and tablets (we’ll soon be beyo...