Customer Engagement Archives - Page 16 of 19

Digital Customer Relationship: The Key to Lasting Engagement

Does your energy utility have an effective digital relationship with customers? The answer may surprise you. Most energy utilities email program promotions to customers, text them outage alerts and offer electronic billing options — creating the impression of a strong connection. However, these transactional tactics actually fall far short of a true digital customer relationship.

To effectively build engagement, energy utilities need to think beyond the monthly bill and generic notifications. A digital customer relationship requires consistent touchpoints, relevant content and messaging that responds to each customer’s specific interests.

What is a digital customer relationship?

A digital customer relationship means that an energy utility proactively uses two-way communication channels to connect with customers, listen to their needs and interests, and deliver targeted, personalized messages to build long-term engagement.

The “digital” part indicates how you reach customers — through email, text, web and social platforms. But the “relationship” in this equation is about much more than which channel you use. Customers expect a digital relationship to be responsive and relevant to their interests.

An energy utility can’t simply replace its old snail-mail outreach with email and consider that to be a digital relationship. Likewise, most digital marketing efforts do not constitute a digital relationship. Those are one-way channels — pushing messages or promotions that are only important to your energy utility, not your customers. An effective digital relationship is built on two-way communications: listening to customer needs and delivering messages that are important to them.

The Netflix secret to a successful digital customer relationship

You probably get at least one email from Netflix every week with movie recommendations you might enjoy or gentle reminders to finish watching a series you started. You might get one of these emails every day!

Are these emails simply marketing messages? After all, the objective is to get you to watch more Netflix so that you won’t cancel your subscription. Or, are these recommendations also a type of customer engagement, helping you get more enjoyment out of your free time by guiding you toward entertaining Netflix content?

Of course these messages can be both a type of marketing and effective customer engagement. The key is personalization. Netflix isn’t promoting the same program to all its customers; the streaming service is making a targeted recommendation, promoting specific content that it thinks you will find relevant and useful. That’s not just digital marketing, it’s a digital relationship.

Importantly, Netflix doesn’t just contact customers when a payment is due at the end of the month. Netflix doesn’t wait to reach out when its rates are going up or to provide restoration updates about streaming outages. Netflix connects with customers all the time, sometimes every day, to make sure customers are enjoying its service.

Does this strategy work? Well, Netflix has built a pretty successful business around its 200 million subscribers. Being part of customers’ daily lives, through continuous digital engagement, is a big part of that success. If you are a Netflix customer, you will be regularly reminded that great entertainment is only a click away.

How energy utilities can build an effective digital customer relationship

Energy utilities can borrow a page from the streaming service’s engagement playbook. Like Netflix, energy providers are a big part of customers’ daily lives, offering a service that’s increasingly valued in today’s connected world. But unlike Netflix, utilities too often fail to build meaningful digital relationships with their customers, instead relying on transactional outreach like monthly bills, outage alerts and generic program promotions.

The good news is, energy utilities can build strong customer relationships. It just takes a commitment to move beyond these typical one-way tactics to embrace the relevant messaging that customers now expect. Here are three key steps to building and maintaining digital customer relationships:

Effective digital engagement starts on day one

Companies that succeed at customer engagement don’t wait to get started. The last time you signed up for an online subscription or created a new account with an ecommerce company, how much time elapsed before you received the first welcome email? Minutes — or seconds? These messages make a great first impression and immediately start building a strong digital relationship.

Likewise, energy utilities can use welcome series emails to start their relationship with new customers (or restart a relationship with customers moving within a service territory). These welcome messages are an opportunity to introduce your utility, show customers how to make the most of their service, and get them started on paperless billing, outage alerts, eNewsletters and other digital touchpoints. And it works! Customers who receive welcome series open future emails from their utility at 30% higher rates than other customers.

Stay top-of-mind with regular touchpoints

Consistency is important in any relationship. Customers want to know that you’re there to support them on their schedule, not just when you’re trying to sell them something.

A monthly email newsletter is one way to maintain engagement on a regular cadence, delivering interesting content and helpful resources on a schedule that’s distinct from other transactional messages. This consistency pays dividends: Questline Digital performance metrics show that eNewsletter readers are much more likely to open other emails from their utility customers, clicking on program promotions at a 16% higher rate than other customers.

Speak to customer needs with relevant messages

Customers don’t just prefer to receive personalized messages — it’s a basic expectation, thanks to companies like Netflix that have set the standard for digital engagement. To meet these expectations, your utility needs to identify and deliver relevant messages, and avoid wasting customers’ time with communications they aren’t interested in.

Customer interests can be identified in a variety of ways: content consumption on your website or eNewsletters, program participation, marketplace purchases or customer personas built using all of these characteristics and more. With this information, you can deliver relevant content and promotional messages that speak to their interests and address their motivations. In one example from Questline Digital performance metrics, an energy utility that segmented its business newsletter by industry saw content engagement increase by 84% for some segments!

Consistent outreach builds strong relationships

A digital customer relationship is much more than digital marketing or one-way communication. To be effective, your energy utility should use two-way channels to listen to customers and consistently provide relevant, personalized messages that speak to their interests. The result will be stronger relationships and long-lasting satisfaction to rival companies that truly excel at digital engagement.

Learn how Questline Digital’s approach to digital engagement builds long-term customer relationships for energy utilities.

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Marketing vs. Advertising: What is Right for Your Energy Utility?

Many people use the terms “marketing” and “advertising” interchangeably when, in fact, they are quite different. To put it simply, marketing promotes a business and its products or services, while identifying customer needs and how best to meet them. Advertising, however, is the act of calling attention to products or services, specifically through paid methods. You can market without advertising, but your energy utility shouldn’t advertise without marketing.

As digital engagement technology continues to evolve, it’s important for your energy utility to understand these differences in order to know which strategies are best to reach customers and achieve program goals. Read on to learn about the specific differences between marketing and advertising and how to use both to your energy utility’s advantage.

What is marketing?

Marketing is the practice of expanding your business by identifying how to best align a product or service to your customers’ needs. Effective marketing helps you understand how best to reach a target audience while increasing revenue at the same time.

In business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, a business is reaching customers directly, such as what your energy utility does to reach your residential or business customers. In business-to-business (B2B) marketing, efforts are directed to reach other businesses. Often, a marketing strategy is broken down into four phases called the four Ps:

Product: A company’s offerings (products or services) that meet customer demands.
Price: A pricing strategy could be built around profit margins, perceived value or opportunity costs.
Place: How and where your products are distributed, such as a physical stores or ecommerce websites.
Promotion: This can include advertising, public relations, content marketing and sales efforts.

Types of marketing

Marketing is not one-size-fits-all. There are several types of marketing available, including:

Content Marketing: A strategic approach based on creating and delivering valuable information, such as blog posts or infographics, to educate your target audience about your business.
Inbound Marketing: A focus on attracting customers to your website. Instead of pushing sales messages on customers who may not be interested, inbound marketing offers solutions that customers are looking for — inspiring them to seek out your business. Tactics often include a combination of content marketing, social media marketing and search engine optimization.
Social Media Marketing: The use of social media channels (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to maintain a conversation with your audience.
Digital Marketing: A “catch-all” for online marketing, leveraging search engines, emails, websites or blogs on both desktop and mobile devices. Digital marketing includes digital advertising as well, such as search engine marketing or paid social promotions.
Traditional Marketing: The opposite of digital marketing, using offline sources, such as print, radio, mail or billboards.
Relationship Marketing: A strategy that relies on both traditional and digital tactics. This strategy focuses on customer retention and satisfaction instead of new sales.
Brand Management: Uses techniques to increase the perceived value of a brand over time. This is achieved through initiatives that manage brand equity, consistent brand messaging and new product pushes that effectively showcases the brand and increases customer loyalty.
Product Development: Filling a gap in the business for a product or service to meet customer needs.

What is advertising?

Advertising is the process of making products or services known to customers, mostly through paid channels. An advertising campaign must be creative, timely and strategic. When executed well, advertising can educate customers, convince them a product or service is superior, improve brand perception, publicize new products, attract new customers and upsell existing customers.

A successful advertising campaign can use a mixture of traditional and digital media to deliver its message and align with the wants or needs of the customer. Advertising is just one component of a marketing strategy; while marketing helps you develop and position products based on customer needs, advertising communicates those products’ existence and influences customers to make a purchase.

Types of advertising

As with marketing, there are numerous types of advertising available. The most successful advertising campaigns uses a mix of these methods:

Digital Advertising: This includes ads paid for on social media, online publications, apps, sponsored content, search engine marketing and programmatic display ads.
Traditional Advertising: This includes advertisements in traditional media, such as newspapers or magazines, billboards or bus stops, direct mail, TV commercials or radio spots.
Retail Advertising: Featured point-of-purchase advertising within stores, such as product placement on displays or carts.
Product Placement: Paid advertisement to have a product emphasized in a TV show or movie.

Marketing or advertising: What should your energy utility focus on?

The short answer to this question is both. You need marketing and advertising efforts aligned to create a well-rounded strategy and connect with your energy utility’s customers. Marketing needs to be the core of what you do — researching customers, understanding their needs, segmenting target audiences to address those needs — but advertising needs to be an aspect of your marketing strategy to fully promote your programs and solutions.

Begin by creating a marketing plan that encompasses your energy utility’s goals. This should be an overarching strategic plan detailing which products, programs or services you want to focus on. In this marketing plan, think about plans for market research, public relations, product development, segmentation, customer support and pricing. Once these items are figured out, add advertising to the mix. While this is often a large part of a budget, it’s necessary to extend your brand’s reach.

Through thoughtful research and implementation, your energy utility’s combined marketing and advertising strategies will help your energy utility achieve its program goals and conversions.

Let Questline Digital’s experts help you craft a marketing and advertising strategy to connect with energy utility customers.

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How to Welcome Business Customers to Your Energy Utility

At the start of their energy service, business customers need the right tools to succeed. By connecting with this target audience from day one, your energy utility can welcome business customers, help them better manage their account and take control of their energy use.

A Welcome Series is a great way to connect with hard-to-reach business customers in your service area and show them your energy utility is a helpful resource and energy expert. As Questline Digital’s performance metrics show, establishing a digital relationship at the start of service is the foundation of long-lasting customer engagement and future program participation. Read on for what to include in your personalized Welcome Series to business customers.

Share resources for easy bill management

With endless tasks on their to-do list, business customers want to save time and embrace convenience. That’s why they need an easy way to manage their bill. In your Welcome Series, promote programs and services that can make business customers’ daily lives a little easier, including:

My Account: Emphasize the ability to access all of their account information in one place online, similar to an electronic filing cabinet.
Paperless billing: Business customers are always on the go. Focus on 24/7 bill access from their smartphone or tablet.
Auto pay: Promote the convenience of never forgetting a payment. Auto pay is a valuable service for busy business owners.
Mobile app: Highlight the benefits of your mobile app as a fast and easy way to access account information, which improves business customers’ energy experience.

Promote efficiency upgrades and DIY solutions

Energy efficiency has a profound impact on a business, both on its bottom line and reputation. A business with a focus on energy efficiency is viewed favorably by customers, employees and the public. However, many business customers may not realize how to become more energy efficient. Help local businesses make valuable efficiency upgrades by promoting:

Rebate programs and upgrades: Promote programs that make it easy for businesses to improve their carbon footprint and bottom line, whether through an in-person site assessment or an online energy tracking tool.
Demand response programs: Show business customers how they can reduce the risk of grid overload and help their utility meet clean energy goals while also improving their bottom line by participating in demand response programs.
Your energy utility’s marketplace: Promote the offerings in your energy marketplace, such as LED lighting and ENERGY STAR appliances, along with the benefits of choosing your marketplace over a major retailer.
Energy efficiency tips and advice: Business customers appreciate upgrades they can do themselves to improve energy efficiency. Share simple, no-cost tips to help them transform their facility.
Electric vehicle information: Provide information on EV rebate programs specific to businesses, such as electric warehouse equipment. Many businesses are also looking to electrify their fleets.

Prepare businesses with safety and reliability information

For business customers, reliability and keeping their business running smoothly is top of mind. However, power outages can happen at any time. An outage has the ability to negatively impact business operations, including reduced output, decreased employee productivity and lost revenue.

We recommend sharing outage information at the start of energy service, so they are prepared before an outage happens at their facility:

How to report an outage: Provide customers with all the ways they can report an outage, whether online, by phone or via social media channels.
Online outage map: Business customers want to know the details of an outage, such as the number of customers affected, estimated restoration time and cause of the outage. This is why sharing a link to your website’s outage map is helpful.
Outage alerts: Encourage customers to sign up for outage text or email alerts to receive real-time updates throughout an outage. This is the best way to keep business customers informed, while improving customer satisfaction scores.
Gas leak information: Share helpful safety tips your business customers need to know, including what to do and what number to call if they smell or hear a gas leak.

Welcome business customers on day one

Your business customers have distinct needs — that’s why your energy utility benefits from a Welcome Series personalized to this audience. From easy ways to manage their account to energy efficiency upgrades, business customers are looking for ways to save time, improve their carbon footprint and increase cost savings. By reaching businesses at the start of service, your energy utility can help them get closer to their goals while achieving long-term customer satisfaction.

Learn how a Welcome Series from Questline Digital will build an effective digital relationship with your business customers.

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Our Story: A Look Back at Questline Digital Over the Years

For over 30 years, Questline Digital has been dedicated to helping energy utilities connect with their customers. Before changing our name to Questline and then Questline Digital, the company that started as “Tech Resources Inc.” was engaging energy utility customers through the latest technology at the time: the fax machine.

While technology has certainly changed over the years, our mission has remained steadfast: to build long-lasting relationships between energy utilities and their customers. Read on for a look back in time at Questline Digital’s humble beginnings and how our company has transformed over the years.

Timeline showing the history of Questline utility customer engagement

The early years of Questline Digital

Questline Digital was officially born in 1990. Dr. Bob Hines, a Battelle employee in Columbus, Ohio, was training an energy utility client on economic development software he developed. The energy utility client asked Hines if there were any Battelle technologies in which their parent company, Dominion Power, might be interested in as an investment. This led to the creation of a 10-person spin-off company, Tech Resources Inc., owned by Battelle and Dominion Power to commercialize technologies at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories (PNNL).

Over the next four years, Tech Resources’ primary service was industrial energy audits and operating an Electric Power Research Institute hotline called Metaline for utility clients. While Metaline originally covered metallurgical-type inquiries, it soon expanded to cover almost any industrial operations issue. A fee was charged for each inquiry.

Dave Reim (now Questline Digital’s president and CEO) and engineer Jose Antommarchi were hired to answer these calls and conduct audits. After the Department of Energy (DOE) began providing industrial energy audits, this part of the business evaporated almost overnight.

Growing pains and new leadership

Ultimately, leadership at Dominion Power and Battelle believed that Tech Resources would not survive, so they offered to sell the company to the remaining employees. In 1994, seven employees bought the company. A new business model offered utilities an annual subscription to answer unlimited customer inquiries; the service was called Questline (Question Line), our company’s namesake.

To promote Questline, Reim had an idea to support utility account managers by developing a fax newsletter to send to their customers. Tech Resources sent out thousands of faxes per month with illustrations hand-drawn by Hines. This allowed the company to expand as a value-added informational service. After several years of moderate growth, the company added some research librarians, including Scott Miller (now Questline Digital’s content director), to help answer inquires.

A new millennium, a new focus

In 2001, Hines became president of Tech Resources. By 2003, utility newsletters had become the main focus of the company. Tech Resources started sending newsletters by email, which led to the growth of an electronically accessible library of Questline articles. The company soon developed the IntraQuest and RelationshipBuilder platforms for content creation and email delivery and tracking.

Throughout this decade, the company appeared every year in the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing companies in America. With Questline newsletters taking center stage, many energy utility clients began to refer to Tech Resources only as “Questline.” In response, the company formally changed its name.

A leader in content marketing

In 2013, Reim was elevated to president of Questline. Hines, who served an essential role in the start of Questline, retired in 2015.

The original RelationshipBuilder platform was also redeveloped into our proprietary Engage platform to give energy utility clients access to powerful content marketing capabilities, including deployment and reporting tools. Through Engage, the original content library was transformed into a catalog of 4,500 articles, videos, infographics, interactive quizzes and social media posts.

Today, Questline Digital works with hundreds of energy utility clients across the United States. The company’s focus is helping energy utilities transform their digital marketing strategy to achieve program results and increase customer engagement. Questline Digital’s content marketing, custom creative and technology solutions are designed specifically with energy utilities in mind.

The company has also become a leader in performance metrics for the energy utility industry. In 2014, Questline launched the Annual Energy Utility Benchmarks Report to share our robust data and insights with our clients and the industry. This valuable report has helped shape the marketing strategy and optimize campaign results for hundreds of energy utilities.

No matter how many years go by, the Questline Digital team remains focused on energy utilities and their customers. As our history demonstrates, our team continues to reinvent itself, adapt to new technologies and think of innovative ways to connect energy utilities with their customers.

We are proud of our track record of successful customer engagement and technological innovation over the years — and we’re just as excited about the next 30 years and what’s to come for our energy utility partners.

Learn how Questline Digital’s expertise in customer engagement can help your energy utility build long-term digital relationships.

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Natural Gas Utilities: Trends to Watch in 2021

What important energy trends should your natural gas customers be aware of in 2021? As their trusted resource, your energy utility should be prepared to answer customer questions and provide information that helps customers get up-to-speed on innovations and new technologies. To get started, here are five energy trends for natural gas consumption and end-use equipment for 2021 and beyond.

1. Natural Gas Consumption

While natural gas consumption in the U.S. dropped somewhat due to the pandemic, the share of natural gas for power generation has grown significantly. Natural gas-fired generators accounted for 43% of operating U.S. electricity generating capacity (GW) in 2019. These natural gas-fired generators also provided 39% of electricity generation (GWh) in 2019, more than any other source. McKinsey’s North American gas model shows that U.S. demand will continue to grow from 95 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) to 125 bcfd by 2035.

2. Natural Gas-Fueled Heat Pumps

Combined heat and power (CHP) may have to soon be renamed cooling, heat and power. These three outputs from natural gas are now available all in one box. A natural gas-fueled internal combustion engine (ICE) drives a heat pump, which produces both heat and cooling. The ICE also drives an alternator producing power (6 to 10 kW) that can be stored in its on-board batteries.

The number of manufacturers offering engine-driven natural gas-fueled heat pumps is growing. Higher performance gas-fired absorption heat pumps and heat pump water heaters and Vuilleumier cycle thermodynamic heat pumps are under development.

3. Condensing Boilers

New developments are improving condensing boiler performance. In a dual return system, two return ports, one above the other, receive return water, with each return port separated from the other by a baffle in the tube bundle. The cooler water enhances condensing before it is blended with higher-temperature return water on the other side of the baffle.

An advanced forced-air condensing natural gas-fired tankless water heater combi system can achieve 30% to 50% energy savings relative to separate best-in-class condensing furnaces and water heaters. These developments will drive faster market penetration of condensing boilers and more energy savings.

4. Boiler Control

Integrated support for BACnet, LONworks and ModBus connectivity facilitates many boiler control functions.

Remote control and diagnostics
Boiler-to-boiler communications
Burner modulation
Lead-lag rotation
Integration with building automation systems (BAS)

Boiler connectivity reduces maintenance response time and costs, improves visibility of operations and allows multiple boiler systems to work better together.

5. Boiler Modularity

Greater efficiency is shrinking the size of boilers. Manufacturers are allowing several smaller units to be (literally) bolted together to increase capacity. This allows replacing larger legacy boilers that are in otherwise inaccessible locations.

Natural gas trends for the new year

Is your utility’s customer engagement strategy ready for 2021? Keeping these emerging trends in mind will help your energy utility put its best foot forward in the new year, and help you better advise natural gas customers.

Educate your natural gas business customers about energy trends with a Questline Digital eNewsletter.

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