Social, Local, Mobile … or SoLoMo … that’s the where the world is headed. Social media sites and applications define how consumers shop and buy.  Content and commerce have moved from the physical world to the virtual world. There are more mobile p...

You know when you type a word or phrase into a search engine and it helps suggest or finish your thought? Try doing that for “customer loyalty in utilities”. For now, you will need to type the whole sentence! You also will not get a tremendous num...

Search the web and you’ll find lots of interesting sites that help residential consumers make smarter decisions about essential home services. Take the US online service MoveUtilities, which positions itself as a “one-stop comparison shopping mark...

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 ...

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...

A previous U-Blog shared research that shows, on average, residential utility customers spend about nine minutes per year actually interacting with their provider … and that many times it is a negative interaction (e.g., a billing error or dispute...

In the previous post, we talked about the rise of social media and how customers will increasingly interact with their electricity provider over social networks like Facebook and Twitter.   Our latest New Energy Consumer study found that overall...

Typically, less than 10 percent of utility consumers currently use social media to discuss or learn about energy-related issues or to interact with their electricity provider. This is quite low, considering almost all of them own phones (many smar...

Timing is everything. Much of what sticks from utilities to consumers may have as much to do with when they engage customers, as with what utilities are actually saying. In the digital world, where consumers occupy the pole position for how techno...