Customers’ communication channel preferences are changing

Understanding how customers expect to interact with their utility is key to a premier customer experience. Not only do customers expect a greater slate of channels to choose from, they also want these preferences optimized to the different tasks they’re trying to accomplish.

Knowing and predicting how customers want to engage with your utility—from traditional mail to online chat—creates greater opportunity for customer engagement and meets customers’ increasing expectation of an omnichannel experience. This report explores current channel preferences for an array of customer interactions from outage reporting to program education. It also looks closely at growing demographic influences such as age, ethnicity, and tech savviness, and it examines how these attributes will shape channel preferences in the future.