Good or Bad, the Possibilities are Endless
Mary-Anna Holden is a former New Jersey BPU Commissioner and Butch Howard is a former South Carolina PSC Commissioner.
We suspect there isn’t anyone who doesn’t loathe calling any customer service phone number only to find themselves repeatedly shouting “representative” or “agent” into the phone. The same is true for utilities.
If the so-called customer service is neglected by an unconcerned representative — and this one call is a customer’s first interface with a utility, beyond establishing the account — the utility is tarnishing rather than polishing its reputation. It’s all about the customer experience.
Pre-pandemic, the popular catchphrase for conference panels was customer experience. We recall one marketing professional calling for the optimal experience to be akin to ordering a psychic pizza, or knowing the pizza type and unique toppings the customers will want before they order.
Put another way, Steve Jobs attributed Apple’s high customer-satisfaction rating on knowing what product the public didn’t know it had to have — yet. Every panel discussion was a buzz of data and metrics, such as how long the caller was on the line. Fine. We don’t recall any metrics about the volume of the shouting “representative” into the phone.
What does a utility do with all the data it amasses? Today, the promise of artificial intelligence, or AI, although widely bandied about, is still quite new but can be immensely useful in utility management, customer engagement, and regulation.