Overview

E Source has a mission is to help utilities make and implement better data-driven decisions that positively impact their customers, their bottom line, and the planet.

The Challenge

Many utilities struggle to truly understand and improve their customer experience.  Traditional metrics like CSAT and NPS offer a general overview but often miss the specific points of friction in customer interactions. To address these challenges my team and I created this report to accurately measure the effort customers must expend to complete tasks.  This report argues for prioritizing Customer Effort Score (CES) to pinpoint these pain points and streamline customer journeys.  By focusing on reducing customer effort, utilities can achieve higher satisfaction, lower call center volumes, and a significantly improved overall customer experience.

The Approach

To explore the importance of Customer Effort Score (CES) in the utilities industry, we employed a a multi-faceted approach.  This report draws on Gartner's foundational work in developing the CES metric to establish a clear understanding of the concept.  Data from the E Source 2022 Customer Experience Survey provides valuable internal market research, illustrating current CES usage among utilities and highlighting trends in their measurement and analysis.  

The report synthesizes insights from various E Source reports on related topics, including CX metrics, post-contact center surveys, and First Contact Resolution (FCR), connecting the dots between different facets of customer experience and demonstrating how CES fits within the broader context of CX management in the utilities sector.  This combination of third-party research, internal survey data, and synthesized expert reports strengthens the argument for prioritizing customer effort as a key metric for improving customer experience.

The Solution

The core solution is to prioritize and effectively leverage Customer Effort Score (CES) to enhance the utility customer experience.  Actively measuring customer effort through well-designed CES surveys, both after transactions and for overall relationship assessment, is essential. Simply gathering data isn't enough; utilities must analyze CES results to understand the underlying reasons for high effort scores, employing driver analysis and direct follow-up with customers experiencing difficulties.To read the rest of the suggestions outlined in this report check out the full report here.