As we discussed in our previous U-Blog consumers today are interested in receiving a wide array of products and services from their energy provider, and some of those are not even related to energy. But what exactly would your customers really pay...

Whether we are shopping for experiences, products or services, the digital world and our ability to connect have given us greater information and ability to choose. As our latest study of more than 10,000 utility customers worldwide shows, “The en...

On average, consumers spend less than 10 minutes annually communicating with their utility and, as most of us might guess, it’s typically not a high-value interaction. At Accenture’s recent International Utilities & Energy Conference (IUEC), f...

It’s hard to keep up with consumer needs and preferences. The latest installment in Accenture’s global research program, Actionable Insights for the New Energy Consumer, proves the point. Two years ago, when we asked consumers if they wanted to us...

It’s hard to buy just Internet or home phone or cable services anymore without getting a package, always at a “bundled discount”, of course. Various home product and service providers are also offering home energy management services and equipment (...

When it comes to cloud computing, your customers are already there—Google, Amazon and other e-tailers have changed how we buy, and cloud-computing devices—from tablets to smartphones—now outnumber personal computers in the world. Still, a 2009 Gar...

That’s the title of our point of view on this topic. But permit me to wax technological for a moment: remember the days of client/server and distributed computing? That trend started out as an idea, then an invention and, finally, blossomed into a...

While residential consumers have typically viewed their relationship with energy providers as low-value and low-touch, this is changing. With financial services and telecommunications companies offering more and more diverse and easy to use contac...

Have you heard of the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (SGCC)?  If not, as the name suggests this non-profit organization brings together North American consumers, advocates, utilities, and technology providers in order to collaborate and advance...

In past U-Blogs, I’ve commented that, while the utility industry is evolving in many ways, a large number of back-office and operational processes remain unchanged from a generation ago, despite how key functions like billing and customer care wor...