Technology when you want it, and a person when you don’t, is how consumers seek to engage with energy providers. Our research found that people prefer digital for 8 out of 10 interactions. And forget the generational digital divide – 67% of Boomers report using digital channels compared with 56% of Gen Zs.
But there remains a significant gap in the digital experience offered by energy providers. Sixty-two percent of consumers have experienced a problem using their energy provider’s digital service, and 37% are not confident using them, a figure that increases to 50% for Gen Z.
Consumers still want the human touch for some interactions, including making a complaint, managing an outage or emergency, and resolving an issue. So, while energy providers must improve the digital experience, a wholesale shift to digital won’t meet consumer needs. Instead, a nuanced 360-degree view of interactions across channels can build omnichannel journeys that use seamless hand-offs from digital self-serve and virtual agents to real people, to give consumers what they want, when they want it.
Turning digital tools and technologies inward can improve the employee experience and accelerate better ways of working. The same virtual agent capabilities that provide intelligent chatbots to customers can create agent-assist tools that improve knowledge management for the front and back office. Automation can cut time, costs and effort, and free up agents to focus on higher-value tasks.
Realizing the benefits of customer and operational technology investments requires a new digital architecture and cloud strategy. With energy providers facing a range of different circumstances, there will be no single way forward, but they will all need a more advanced and flexible digital platform.