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When there’s a disruption in the service a utility provides, life stops. Customers expect power, gas, and water will flow when they need them. And it’s a big job to maintain the infrastructure and supply chains that keep things running. But utilities are finding that, in addition to providing communities with essential services, they’re also in the business of managing customer relationships. Whether a utility faces stiff competition in a deregulated market or is the sole provider in a given community, the customer experience matters.
Today’s utility customers want reliable service—but they also want multi-channel engagement, proactive communications, billing transparency, and accountability on environmental impact. And with AI-powered automation, utilities can deliver. AI and automation combine to empower customers, transform self-service, and help utility companies anticipate customer sentiment to leverage and fuel better customer experiences. In deregulated markets, superior customer experience is a competitive differentiator. And, in any market, it can help raise the quality of service while lowering costs.
Empowering customers to help themselves
Rates and reliability. They’re the most obvious factors that determine a customer’s satisfaction with a utility. But what more do customers want? The ability to help themselves. That’s why innovative utilities are looking for ways to take the friction and effort out of being a customer.
Customers want easy access to information on billing, payments, planned and unplanned outages, and moving meters. A line item can confuse them on a bill, and they need clarification. And they always want to know when and why service is disrupted. Answering these questions and proactively managing customer expectations create the foundation of a great customer experience. And customers increasingly expect personalized and responsive engagement. But knowledgeable contact center agents are in short supply. So, utilities need another way to get customers the support they need.
Automating self-service for better experiences
With the combination of generative AI and automation, utilities can offer customers advanced self-service options that connect them with information and support on-demand, across existing channels such as voice and chat. Intelligent virtual assistants can access multiple systems and deliver the right information to resolve customer issues at the first point of contact—and they can step customers through the completion of many account- and order-related tasks.
Automation also ensures that self-service keeps getting better. Communications mining taps AI capabilities to identify requests accurately, understand sentiment, and extract important data from messages such as emails, tickets, and cases. Those insights help improve self-service for move-in/move-out requests, billing disputes, and service status inquiries. Customers get faster resolution, and utility employees are freed up to focus on other tasks.
UiPath analysis shows that expanding self-service improves Net Promoter Score (NPS) by five points at 1/20th the cost. And that’s good news for utilities, in competitive markets as well as regulated markets. As utilities work to keep the lights on, self-service helps ensure great customer service is always on as well.
Transforming processes for a customer-centric approach
AI-powered automation can bridge the gaps between incompatible systems and break down the operational silos within a utility to keep the organization on course and focused on customer needs.
Even the best-performing utilities undergo outages and can experience spikes in customer complaints. Automation can help by identifying issues and escalating cases that are approaching service level agreement (SLA) breaches. With the analytical horsepower of AI and machine learning, utility companies can zero in on root causes and spot historical trends that enterprise leaders may not even be aware of.
The combination of AI and automation can also help utilities be more efficient and proactive in field service. AI-powered automation helps field service technicians save time and eliminate errors in record-keeping, diagnostics, and routine maintenance tasks. It also makes real-time decision-making more precise to improve the safety and efficiency of field operations. And it helps utilities identify and address potential service and infrastructure problems before they affect the customer experience.
And because utilities generate so much data on customers, markets, transactions, and competitors, AI-powered automation fuels the knowledge management best practices that are the foundation for personalized service. Utilities will be able to better predict customer needs and offer the exact bundle of services that best serve those needs — ultimately reducing churn, boosting retention rates, and driving up NPS scores.
Plugging into a better customer experience
Automation is the mechanism for turning AI capabilities into real-world solutions. For utilities, AI-powered automation opens up new possibilities for the customer experience.
Leading utilities know that an engaging, seamless customer experience shouldn’t be an afterthought. It’s now a competitive necessity. AI-powered automation can help utilities make customer experience (CX) the foundation for sustainable competitive advantage.
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This article was brought to you by UiPath. ASUG develops and publishes insights regularly in partnership with its members and customers. For more information on ASUG sponsored content, contact isaac.feldberg@asug.com.