Becoming customer centric will build trust and win hearts and minds

By Paul Laycock

The annual Edelman Trust and credibility Barometer for 2012 has just been launched surveying 25,000 respondents across 25 countries. A deep dive into the 16 attributes of customer trust found that listening to customer needs, treating employees well, placing customers ahead of profits, and having ethical business practices are all considered more important to the respondents than companies delivering consistent financial returns. This clearly indicates that the path forward for long term trust, and consequently profitability, is to take a more customer centric approach.

What I found most interesting from the statistics is that globally, customer trust in the energy industry to do the right thing has dropped from 60% in 2011 to 53% in 2012. This decrease doesn’t surprise me.  If we look at the UK utility industry specifically, we know that levels of customer trust have been eroded due to complex tariffs and the failure by our providers to deliver adequate levels of transparency, accountability and integrity, particularly with rising wholesale costs.

As I see it, the biggest way for utilities to restore some element of trust is to transform the way they communicate. For instance being upfront and honest about why suppliers charge the prices they do – disclosing the wholesale costs they pay and declaring what proportion, if any, of customer charges relate to green taxes and infrastructure investment – might seem like a risky retention strategy but such openness could be a great way to start developing the trust and respect that’s necessary for any long-term relationship to thrive.

Building trust requires a customer-centric approach

Also, with competition for their business rife, consumers today want much more than a monthly statement. They need a compelling reason to stay and therefore cannot be treated as a dumb billing point. They expect a spread of proactive communication from their provider offering more beneficial price plans, pre-notifications of outages, communication about actions being taken to resolve disruptions caused by cable theft, education on environmental behaviour and efficiency rewards and clarification on how upcoming changes such as The Green Deal impacts them. By truly understanding what customers want and need, and what concerns them, providers can build trust and loyalty.

So how do utilities get such granular insight on its customers? Service providers need to build bridges with customers by developing a strategy that successfully incorporates customer communication, data management and customer insight. Systems and processes need to be completely overhauled so that the customer becomes the object of focus for the entire company. Only then will utilities be able to view and treat each customer as an individual, offering personalised tariffs, expert advice and additional services that differentiate the supplier in terms of value, rather than price and win back customer’s hearts and minds.