The industry is evolving. The customer is shifting. The rules are changing. And while electricity is still one of the most precious commodities powering every minute of our day... It's no longer simple like it used to be. 

Between distributed generation demands, net metering and technology innovations, there are hard choices for you to make, complex programs to manage, and new opportunities to navigate. 

With customer expectations and demands increasing, it is more important than ever for utilities to address the customer and their barriers to participation and satisfaction. Through a series of customer interviews (and 30 years in the industry), we know that one of the biggest barriers to participation is customer distrust in utilities. This is a direct hurdle for your customer satisfaction scores. 

The light over the bathroom sink burns out. You turn to the supply closet to grab a new one, and find your partner used the last bulb, but left the empty packaging. 

After days of shaving and applying make up under the one light that's still working... You finally remember to stop on your way home to get a new bulb... 

What's your favorite brand of petroleum?

No reply? That's what I thought. Gas is a commodity product. No one cares who they're buying it from.

Think about that for a second. 

ENERGY STAR addresses consumer demands. Do you? The brand was established in 1992 to make it easy for consumers to identify energy efficient products, and to help reduce pollutants.

Talk about success… Today, we know ENERGY STAR as the standard consumers expect. The absence of the label is likely to be more powerful than its actual presence. The brand not only gained the trust of consumers nationwide, but also created extreme behavior change over time. 

When it comes to inspiring the EE customer to participate in programs or to purchase an EE product, the typical industry message is rooted in the benefit of financial savings. And it makes sense.

Who doesn’t want to spend less on their energy bill? 

How do you inspire customers to participate in your EE programs? Do any of these sound familiar? "Lower your monthly bill!" or "Save on energy costs!" or "Save energy. Save money!"

We, as marketers, are communicating the benefit of financial savings to our customer. And for the most part, this message works.

So, we guide customers on ways they can save money program by program... But do they all really value this idea of savings?

Consumer Research Disrupts Conventional Thinking on How to Get People to Embrace Energy Efficiency

Utilities and their marketing mavens may be speaking the wrong language to their customers, according to our recent proprietary consumer research. 

We’re focusing on how your residential customers engage with energy efficiency across their own social channels. In order to increase their participation in your energy efficiency programs, we want to first understand how/if they’re talking about energy efficiency with their friends. Is energy efficiency relevant to their conversations? If so, how are they talking about it?  On a personal and homeowner level, energy efficiency content tends to be focused around two primary conversation types: exploratory and experience sharing. Users look to social media to ask their peers about processes, costs, and benefits, relying on their extended personal networks to supply information about offers, opportunities, struggles and worth to these types of changes. 

This week, we’re focusing on how your business customers promote energy efficiency across their own social channels. Because in order to increase their participation in your programs, we should first understand how/if they’re using energy efficiency to increase engagement with their own customers. How is energy efficiency relevant to their business and to their customers? How do they communicate about it? Is it working?