Customer Engagement Archives - Page 19 of 19

Webinar: COVID-19 Business Customer Strategies for Utilities

As the coronavirus outbreak continues, so do conversations surrounding how best to approach communications with customers. On April 3, Questline Digital President Dave Reim hosted the second coronavirus town hall forum and led a discussion on communication best practices for energy utility business customers.

A recent J.D. Power Utility Pulse survey that showed 49% of customers recall seeing a coronavirus message from their utility in the past seven days and only 36% of customers rate their electric utilities’ response to coronavirus as great, excellent or perfect. This data presents an immense opportunity to close the gap and increase engagement with the other 64% of customers.

Our panel of industry experts, which included representatives from American Electric Power, Baltimore Gas & Electric, Eversource and ElectriCities of North Carolina, provided an inside look into their utilities’ strategies. They stated that delivering messages to business customers was just as much a focus as communicating to residential customers. In fact, demonstrated in the results of our forum survey, utilities are already communicating with customers on a wide range of topics, with frequent mentions including:

69% Grace period for late payment of bills
66% Security of power deliver
62% Energy saving tips or advice
52% Available channels of communication

Among the other topics included — energy efficiency program promotion, tips or advice for business health during the outbreak, community support activities and donations, information about non-utility assistance and changes to infrastructure maintenance — not a single topic was left without a response. Energy utilities are working to meet business customers where they are and provide valuable information to this audience.

To push the boundaries further on what utilities should communicate, a second survey focused on non-traditional content and messaging that utilities would consider providing to their business customers. Responses included:

72% Finding and applying for small business stimulus funds
59% How best to serve and help those in your community
56% How to protect employees who can’t work from home
47% Calming employee fears

With most of the utilities interested in communicating more information regarding small business stimulus funds, Questline Digital Senior Engineer Mike Carter covered key highlights from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)

Up to 100% forgivable loan
Loan amount up to 2.5 times average monthly operation expenses up to a maximum of $10 million

Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Program

Separate program from PPP
A $10,000 advance is forgivable

Unemployment Insurance Coverage

An additional $600 per week
13 additional weeks of unemployment coverage

Even as crisis communications messages flood customer inboxes, Questline Digital’s performance metrics show that customers want to hear from their energy utility. The open rate for coronavirus-related messages consistently outperforms Questline Digital benchmarks, which demonstrates that these messages are resonating with customers.

Keep your business customers informed and engaged with an eNewsletter solution from Questline Digital.

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Webinar: Utilities Share Advice for Coronavirus Messaging

During this challenging time, it’s critical for your energy utility to proactively communicate with customers to reassure them of your preparedness. On March 25, 2020, Questline Digital President Dave Reim held a town hall forum to review best practices of responding to the coronavirus outbreak.

Using real-life examples from the energy industry, the panelists shared their suggestions for the messaging priorities that utilities should focus on in the weeks ahead. Among other advice, the panelists recommended:

Be real. Be as transparent and authentic as possible in your communications with every audience.
Be compassionate. This crisis is very personal for customers (as well as utility employees). Offer assurances that you will be there for them no matter what hardships we face in the coming weeks and months.
Be consistent. Speak with the same voice, and share the same message, across all of your utility’s communications and marketing channels.
Be focused. Put other marketing initiatives on hold. Customers have one thing on their mind right now, and they want to know that you share their concern.

Customers want to hear from you. This is a key moment to reinforce their trust in their energy utility. Questline Digital’s performance metrics show that customers are opening emails and paying attention to their energy utility — despite the huge number of crisis messages that are currently flooding inboxes.

Magen Howard, communication and member services manager for Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives, may have said it best: “Authenticity during a personal and unprecedented crisis is key.”

Matt McDonald, external communications associate at Duquesne Light Company, added that proactive communication is important for “setting the tone” and “leading with heart and exuding confidence.” Through meaningful and authentic content, utilities can serve as partners to their customers in planning their own response to this unprecedented event.

Take this opportunity to reassure them that you will continue to provide safe and reliable power, you will work to protect the health of customers and your employees, and you will help ease the burden of financial challenges caused by this crisis.

Download Questline Digital’s eBook, “How COVID-19 Transformed Customer Communications.”

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Content Marketing: Recipe For Success

In the energy utility industry, connecting with customers is a notoriously difficult challenge. Like every brand, energy utilities are vying for customer attention in an overwhelming, oversaturated digital landscape. In fact, a majority of American consumers are exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 ads every single day. For brands of all shapes and sizes, content marketing is a powerful tool to break through the digital clutter.

A consistent content strategy positions your energy utility as a trusted source of information that works to improve your customers’ lives,” says Brian Lindamood, Questline Digital’s Vice President of Marketing & Content Strategy. “It helps you build a strong, long-lasting relationship with customers. Then, when they sign up for a program, it’s based on trust and familiarity, not a one-time sales message.”

List of ingredients that go into content marketing strategy

Making connections

Instead of a one-time sales message, content marketing provides useful information that resonates with a specific audience. It’s also three times as effective as paid search advertising. To maximize engagement with energy utility customers, content has to be impactful, whether answering a question, responding to a pain point or providing actionable information on a relevant topic.

Growing consumer interest in solar power, electric vehicles and smart home technologies are great avenues to explore in content marketing. According to a Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative study, utilities emerged as the entity consumers relied on the most for accurate information about new technologies like solar power and EVs.

For example, Questline Digital recently launched a solar energy content marketing solution to help energy utilities become a resource for customers interested in adding solar power to their homes and businesses. This solar content helps energy utilities answer customer questions and provide useful advice.

“Energy utilities are competing with every other brand for the time and attention of their customers,” Lindamood says. “That’s why it’s so important to build lasting, meaningful connections with customers. When customers know they can rely on their energy provider for helpful advice, they will seek you out for that information.”

5 benefits of content marketing for energy utilities:

Improve customer satisfaction: Content marketing positions an energy utility as a trusted source of information that improves customers’ lives.
Increase program participation: Customers who see their energy utility as a trusted resource are more likely to engage with program promotions.
Reduce call center demand: When your content answers customers’ questions, they rely less on telephone calls.
Boost new technology adoption: Informed customers understand how their smart home and smart grid benefits their community.
Decrease paper bill costs: Engaged customers are more likely to have a digital relationship with their energy utility.

Know your customers

The first step to a successful content marketing strategy is understanding your audience. Before diving into the content creation process, you need to find out what topics resonate with your customers. What are the challenges and pain points among a particular customer segment? What are growing consumer trends? What are common questions received in your call center? Your content marketing strategy should speak directly to your customers’ specific needs and interests.

In addition to the right messaging, the type of content is also important. Customers engage differently, and retain different information, whether they are reading an in-depth article, scanning an infographic or watching a video.

“The key to this approach is a solid foundation of consumer research,” Lindamood says. “It is critical to know what interests your customers have, what questions you can answer, and what type of content has resonated in the past.”

According to Questline Digital’s Energy Utility Benchmarks Report, residential customers prefer eye-catching infographics, videos and quizzes. In comparison, small and medium-sized business customers, who are traditionally short on time, engage most with infographics, videos and slideshows. For Key Accounts business customers who seek out rich information, in-depth articles remain the most popular content.

Despite higher production costs, video and interactive content are proven to deliver a higher ROI based on the level of engagement. Access to a large library of content, like Questline Digital’s over 4,500 assets, can help deliver a successful content marketing strategy.

Educating and empowering customers

As consumers continue to be inundated with digital ads, content marketing will become a vital strategy to drive engagement and build lasting relationships with customers.

Learn how Questline Digital can help your energy utility break through the clutter with a targeted content marketing strategy.

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A Look Back at the History of Infographics

Infographic shows the history of visual communications

What do you get when you combine masterful design, concise info, creativity and meaningful stats? The all-powerful, brain-delighting, popular infographic — an ideal visual format for social media sharing that is easily consumed by energy utility customers and a great way to explain complex topics.

Infographics are a big part of today’s content marketing landscape. Subscribe to any business or special interest digital newsletter, and you’ll likely see an infographic. These data visualizations tackle nearly all topics in every industry.

Their popularity among readers continues to grow. The competition for digital mindshare is fierce and attention spans are at an all-time low. Studies show the human attention span has, on average, hit 8.25 seconds — shorter than the common goldfish.

Infographics are designed to catch your eye. Many of them do. But to keep that attention, they must clearly and creatively convey key information.

Before we dive into what makes today’s infographics popular, let’s look at where it all started. The very first infographics were, more than likely, found in early human dwellings. You guessed it — we’re talking about cave drawings. Design experts believe the earliest examples of the art form can be found on prehistoric cave walls from 30,000 years ago, when early humans painted scenes featuring animals, nature, family life and more.

Ancient Egyptians’ well-known hieroglyphics, which visually depict stories of religion, daily life and work, are considered by many to be early forms of infographics. The later, more sophisticated Egyptian hieroglyphics combined a visual alphabet that formed word pictures — artful, visual communications that have stood the test of time.

As we fast forward to the 1700s, infographics are discovered in the forms of charts, graphs and even maps. Many of those look a bit like basic infographics of today. In this era, we see typography beginning to take on a central role in design.

In the 1750s, William Playfair, a Scottish inventor and engineer, is reported to have invented and published charts that included line graphics, pie charts, graphs and other forms of basic data visualizations to help people understand economic factors such as taxes, labor and product costs. As Playfair put it, “Data should speak to the eyes because they are the best judge of proportion, being able to estimate it with more quickness and accuracy.”

In an article by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, she explained, “Before Playfair’s time, words and drawings were two distinct ways of communicating that rarely converged. But as the burgeoning Enlightenment gave birth to modern science and the first traces of the Industrial Revolution, economists, engineers and historians found a need for a new language: One that could quantify data visually.”

French lawyer André-Michel Guerry took data visualization further in the 1830s through shading. He darkened areas on a city map where crime or illiteracy rates were higher and, as a result, developed data-driven social science.

Even the mother of modern nursing helped shape modern infographics. Polar area charts, a twist on the everyday pie chart, were invented by English nurse Florence Nightingale and William Farr, England’s premier statistician. They discovered many fatalities from the Crimean War occurred due to poor hygiene. By charting different colors to designate types of fatalities, Parliament and the queen could quickly see how essential hygiene was, prompting them to improve sanitary conditions.

Today’s infographics combine actionable data insights with striking visuals to catch attention and encourage engagement. In fact, people are 30 times more likely to read an infographic than a regular article. Plus, people remember 65% of the information on the pictures they see. As we continue to seek new ways to distill complex information into easy-to-consume stories, infographics will undoubtedly be a driving force in the future of marketing and communications.

Sources: Brain Rules, Branch Collective, Gizmodo, HubSpot, NeoMam, Smithsonian Magazine, Visually.

Connect with your utility’s customers using infographics from Questline Digital’s Content Catalog.

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