Tag: Content Strategy

Inclusivity in communications is more than just a buzzword; it’s a critical component of effective customer engagement and community building. Additionally, inclusive communications are essential for fostering a sense of belonging and equity among all customers.

Utilities have a unique responsibility to ensure their messages reach and resonate with every segment of their diverse community. Fostering inclusivity is especially important for utilities serving a broad customer base that relies on electricity, gas and water for daily living.

By prioritizing inclusive communication strategies, utilities can address customer needs and preferences. This approach not only helps build trust but also promotes a supportive relationship between a utility and its customers.

Understanding the Importance of Inclusive Communications

Inclusivity in utility communications means making all customers feel seen, heard and valued, regardless of their background. Fostering inclusivity involves recognizing and addressing the diverse needs of various customer groups, including different languages, cultural practices, literacy levels and accessibility requirements.

The importance of inclusivity in communications cannot be overstated. Inclusive communication strategies build trust and enhance customer satisfaction. When customers feel understood and respected, they are more likely to engage with communications, participate in programs and provide valuable feedback. This engagement, in turn, helps utilities improve their communications and better meet the needs of their entire customer base.

Examples of inclusive versus non-inclusive communications can illustrate the impact of these practices. Inclusive communications might include:

• Providing marketing messages in multiple languages
• Using simple and clear language for all literacy levels
• Guaranteeing accessibility for individuals with disabilities

On the other hand, non-inclusive communications may overlook these considerations, leading to misunderstanding, frustration and disengagement among customers. By learning from these examples, utilities can develop more inclusive communication strategies.

Understanding Your Diverse Community

Understanding your utility’s audience is essential to creating effective and inclusive communications. Utilities serve a wide range of individuals with varying preferences, cultural backgrounds and circumstances. To tailor communications, utilities should gather and analyze data about their customers’ demographics. This process might involve collecting information, such as age, language preferences, income levels and additional needs, that can help utilities craft messages that resonate with different segments of their target audience.

Using customer personas is one approach to representing diverse groups within a customer base. Personas are fictional characters created based on data and insights, reflecting real-life customer segments. By developing detailed personas, utilities can better understand the specific requirements of different groups and design targeted inclusive communication strategies that address their unique needs and expectations.

According to E Source, many utilities use personas for three main reasons:

1. Designing or improving website features
2. Tailoring marketing messages
3. Developing tailored programs and services

Incorporating this understanding makes marketing messages more relevant and accessible to all customers. For example, knowing that some customers prefer receiving information in another language or that other customers require materials in an accessible format helps utilities to make appropriate adjustments. This targeted approach not only improves the effectiveness of inclusive communications but also demonstrates a commitment to diversity, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and engagement.

How to Create Inclusive Communications

Creating inclusive communication strategies and content is a crucial aspect of fostering diversity. To make information easy to understand for all customers, use clear and concise language and avoid jargon and complex sentences. Simplifying messages and using straightforward explanations can prevent misunderstandings and help customers easily grasp important information.

Multilingual communication strategies further enhance inclusivity by addressing the needs of non-English-speaking customers. Providing translations of key materials in multiple languages ensures that language barriers don’t hinder a customer’s access to essential programs and updates. Maintaining accuracy and cultural relevance in all translations is important when translating materials. This demonstrates your utility’s respect for linguistic diversity and helps to build stronger customer connections.

Questline Digital’s Engage Global Translate is a great example of a professional translation feature that makes it easy for customers to choose and save their preferred language for all web page content and emails. With 134 languages available to choose from, engagement is more inclusive than ever before.

Visual inclusivity also plays a significant role in enhancing inclusivity and accessibility. This might include imagery featuring a diverse representation of people.

Visual content should also adhere to accessibility guidelines, such as sufficient color contrast and descriptive alt text. This ensures information is accessible to individuals with visual impairments.

By implementing these best practices, utilities can create a more inclusive communication experience that meets the needs of all customers, regardless of their backgrounds, abilities or preferences.

Engaging with a Diverse Community Across Channels  

Engaging customers through various communication channels is essential for reaching a broad audience and making information accessible to everyone. Utilities should utilize both digital and traditional methods to connect with different segments of their customer base.

Digital channels offer convenience and immediate access to information. Your utility should be using a variety of digital platforms, including:

• Email
• Social media
• Mobile apps
• Email newsletters
• Webinars

Traditional methods remain imperative to reach customers who are less comfortable with digital technology or those with limited access to technology. These formats may include:

• Direct mail
• Community events
• Call centers
• Bill inserts

By meeting customers on their preferred platforms, utilities demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity. Additionally, it’s an effective way to make sure that important messages are delivered and received. 

Measuring Your Utility’s Inclusive Communication Efforts

Measuring your utility’s efforts to increase diversity and inclusion in its communications is essential for evaluating the success of your strategies and driving continuous improvement. Setting clear benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs) helps track the impact of inclusivity initiatives and provides a basis for evaluating their success.

When looking to track your inclusive communication efforts, consider metrics such as:

• Email click-through rates
• Email click-to-open rates
• Social media impressions
• Website page visits
• Customer satisfaction scores

This feedback offers valuable insights into how well a utility’s marketing message reaches and resonates with its diverse community. Regularly reviewing these metrics allows utilities to identify areas for improvement and adjust strategies accordingly.

Embracing Inclusivity for Enhanced Customer Relationships

Fostering inclusivity in utility communications is crucial for building trust among your utility’s diverse community. By understanding the varying needs of your customers, creating accessible and multilingual content and engaging through various channels, utilities can ensure their communications are effective and equitable.

Inclusive communications enhance customer satisfaction, demonstrating a utility’s commitment to serving all members of its community with respect and consideration.

Explore how Questline Digital’s Engage Global Translate feature can help your utility engage with its diverse customer base.

Effective communication has become more important than ever for utility marketers. To truly connect with customers, water and energy providers must adopt an outreach strategy that goes beyond a simple, one-time approach.

In fact, it takes five to seven interactions for a customer just to remember a brand. An effective communications strategy requires a consistent series of touchpoints that work together to build trust, loyalty and familiarity over time.

The key to success lies in maintaining consistency in utility customer communications. By establishing regular and reliable interactions, utilities can cultivate trust and loyalty. This forms the foundation of a genuine digital relationship, leading to a multitude of benefits.

The Benefits of Enhanced Communication with Utility Customers

Consistency in utility customer communications cannot be overlooked. The benefits of such an approach are substantial, including:

• Stronger digital customer relationships
• Increased customer control in decision-making
• Enhanced operational efficiencies and reduced costs
• Increased customer retention and loyalty
• Boost in brand awareness and reputation

Building strong digital customer relationships

Prioritizing consistent utility customer communication is essential for fostering a strong digital relationship. By regularly sharing relevant information, your utility can keep customers informed and engaged on your utility’s services and operations.

Brian Lindamood, VP of Marketing and Content Strategy at Questline Digital, emphasizes the importance of maintaining consistency in order to build strong digital relationships with customers. “Merely reaching out to customers when there is a need does not constitute a true relationship,” says Lindamood. “To form strong digital relationships, utility companies must consistently deliver proactive messages that align with customers’ interests and needs.”

Ensuring regular delivery of relevant and personalized content is vital for building and maintaining a strong digital relationship with customers. By consistently providing valuable information, you establish yourself as a reliable source they can turn to. This not only keeps your utility’s audience engaged but also allows them to foster a deeper connection with your brand.

One way to foster engagement is through consistent touchpoints like newsletters. Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO) achieved increased engagement and participation in its energy efficiency programs by doing just this. The utility established a monthly residential email newsletter that included educational content for customers, plus information on the utility’s programs. By maintaining this consistent digital relationship, SWEPCO saw a substantial increase in customer engagement and satisfaction.

Increased customer control in decision-making

When it comes to utility services, the complexity and unfamiliarity of industry jargon can often leave customers feeling confused and frustrated.

Regular communication with utility customers is crucial in helping educate them and improve understanding of programs and new technologies. As customer education increases, the more empowered they’ll feel to take control of their energy and water usage. This can be achieved by providing educational resources that allow customers to stay updated with the latest trends, important news, billing updates, rate options, program promotions and more.

When customers are well-informed about their utility’s offerings, they have the confidence to select programs and services that best suit their needs and goals. This not only benefits the customers but also strengthens the relationship between the utility and its customers, fostering trust and loyalty.

Enhanced operational efficiencies and reduced costs

By streamlining communication channels and processes, utilities can eliminate inefficiencies and minimize the risk of miscommunication. This not only saves time but also reduces operational costs, allowing utilities to allocate resources more effectively.

Sarah Sharp, Business Development Consultant with Questline Digital, says, “There is a lot of information to communicate for utility customers, so it is important to minimize jargon and send information when it is most relevant.”

Well-informed customers are less likely to phone a call center, and when they do have questions they will know where to find answers using digital resources. A consistent digital relationship also drives adoption of programs like paperless billing and autopay, further reducing operational costs for utilities.

Increased customer retention and loyalty

Maintaining consistent communication with utility customers enables utilities to position themselves as trusted community resources. “Building trust is the most crucial element in customer communications,” says Sharp.” If people don’t trust you, they won’t listen to you.”

In building trust, customers will know that they can turn to their utilities for guidance on their energy and water usage, cost-saving tips, programs to participate in, and more.

Consistent outreach also raises the visibility of the utility across different touchpoints. “Customers are receiving information in many different channels. When it comes to omnichannel communication, it is crucial to be consistent between channels,” says Sharp. This means ensuring your messages are consistent in tone and language, as well as being delivered in the channels customers expect to receive communications in.

Boost in brand awareness and reputation

Through consistent messaging across channels, utilities can reach a wider audience and showcase their commitment to customer satisfaction. This increased visibility and positive reputation can build new customer relationships and strengthen existing ones.

One way to demonstrate this commitment is to focus on proactive communications versus reactive communications. For example, informing customers about potential outages during storm season can help them be better prepared, even if an outage doesn’t occur. This proactive approach not only builds trust but also highlights the utility’s dedication to keeping customers informed and supported.

One major investor-owned utility in the Northeast focused on these types of communications to ensure customers received timely updates ahead of forecasted storms. By leveraging pre-built email templates, the utility was able to quickly deploy messages with information regarding the projection of the storm, as well as highlighting self-service resources customers could use to stay connected.

Best Practices to Ensure Consistent Communications with Utility Customers

Consistency in customer communication plays a pivotal role in a utility’s outreach strategy, but it can come with challenges as well. Here are two ways to foster success.

Conduct regular training and upskilling programs for employees

Providing regular training and upskilling programs for employees helps them develop strong communication skills and stay updated with industry trends. This ensures that all customer-facing employees are equipped to effectively communicate with customers.

For example, with limited resources and a small training team, one Southeast utility faced challenges in educating its customer-facing employees to address customer questions. To combat this challenge, the utility leveraged monthly training webinars that were customized to meet the needs of the account managers, who were then better prepared to engage with customers.

Leverage marketing automation tools

Customers want a seamless experience from start to finish, and that’s not possible unless employees have the resources they need to quickly and easily communicate with them. By managing their customer interactions with automation tools, utilities can ensure timely outreach that meets customer expectations from beginning to end.

A Midwest energy utility integrated a customer relationship management (CRM) tool to replace their traditional way of deploying emails. Questline Digital’s Engage platform enabled the utility to manage and send quick-turn communications to its customers, using pre-approved templates and centralized customer lists. As a result, the utility successfully sent nearly 3.7 million operational emails, facilitating a seamless and timely customer experience.

Harness the Power of Consistency in Utility Customer Communications

Consistent communication with utility customers brings numerous benefits, such as improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, enhanced operational efficiency and increased brand awareness. By implementing consistent communication strategies and leveraging appropriate tools, energy utilities can establish themselves as trusted advisors while delivering exceptional customer experiences.

Learn how Questline Digital can help your utility deliver consistent customer communications and build stronger digital relationships.