The green commitment of utilities is of critical importance. Escalent conducted a new Cogent Syndicated study that underscores this importance.
Engaged Customer Relationship Index
The Engaged Customer Relationship Index (ECR) dropped eight points after peaking in 2021. The decline is attributed to customer insecurity towards the environmental commitment of utility organizations.
Escalent’s ECR Index is a comprehensive customer relationship metric used by utility management to assess customer engagement.
82 brands
The Utility Trusted Brand & Customer Engagement™: Business study tracked 82 gas, electric and combined utilities. They do this tracking to identify industry brand and customer experience opportunities and trends. Escalent publishes the study every six months. The organization is a leading human behavior consulting and analytics firm in energy and utilities.
Energy projects
81% of the companies have energy-related projects. Some are sustainability plans, climate plans, and emergency response plans. However, these same companies show the most significant decrease in ECR. This decrease indicates that the concern for energy is taking a back seat, and the fears for tuning environmental performance improvement are increasingly taking higher priority by utilities.
K.C. Boyce, vice president of Escalent, said: “Leadership during the energy transition is becoming a safe bet for business customers as they are making it clear that environmental performance is increasingly important to them. And while they are not necessarily naming ‘leadership during the energy transition’ as an important brand trait for utilities, their perceptions, and behaviors, such as increased preference for non-utility suppliers of energy products and services, indicate that they certainly expect leadership to happen.”
Business Customer Champions
Despite the sector’s declining ECR, Business Customer Champions recognized 15 utilities, due to their increased engagement over last year. By effectively promoting various topics, such as renewable and green energy they achieved this increase. As a result, customers consider companies to be much more committed to using environmentally friendly energy and transitioning away from fossil fuels.
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