Currently, 30 percent of customers use their utilities’ online services, and that number increases every year. Those customers may be looking for an easy way to:
- Pay their bill
- Change their service address
- Get outage information
And that’s just the beginning! They want and expect to interact with your company’s web site in a simple, efficient way.
Is Your Web Site Meeting Your Customers’ Needs?
E Source understands what your customers need and, most importantly, expect from your web site. We can help you address critical issues such as:
- Using your web site and e-mail to interact with your commercial, industrial, and residential customers
- Increasing paperless billing adoption rates
- Using online videos effectively
- Understanding and providing support to customers who use mobile devices
- Encouraging people to self-serve
By signing up for the newsletter, you’ll get the latest insights on utility web sites and online customer service. Find previous issues in our newsletter archive.
What You Get with the E Source E-Business Service
Benchmark Your Web Site to Others in the Industry and Get Recommendations for Improvement
Get Real-Time Responses to Your Most Pressing Questions About Online Best Practices
Gain Access to Your Peer Community and Experts in the Field
Learn Industry Insights from Our Timely Research Reports and Online Utility Web Site Design Center
To Subscribe or for Additional Information
Download the E Source E-Business Service benefits flyer (PDF) to learn more or contact our business development team at 303-444-7788.
Benchmark Your Web Site to Others in the Industry and Get Recommendations for Improvement
Since 2002, E Source has been benchmarking utility web sites to gauge how successful they are in serving residential customers. Our study, the E Source Review of North American Electric and Gas Company Web Sites, has quickly become the industry standard for assessing web sites as they relate to residential customers’ online preferences.
Every two years, we test the features and functions that residential customers have told us are most important to them when they visit their utility’s web site. We have actual residential customers review basic features such as the home page and contact options as well as more-advanced functions such as bill viewing, checking an account balance, and energy usage analysis. We collect data from at least 100 utilities across North America and develop a comprehensive ranking so you can see how your company’s web site performs compared to that of others in the industry.
Members of the E Source E-Business Service receive:
- An exclusive rankings report with in-depth results and analysis for all features and functions tested
- A personalized web site assessment based on a detailed review of your company’s web site and an evaluation of the factors affecting your ranking
- A results teleconference just for you to review your web site assessment with a focus on what works and what doesn’t
- Recommendations for what actions you can take to improve your web site
Get Real-Time Responses to Your Most Pressing Questions About Online Best Practices
Think of E Source as an extension of your staff! As an E Source member, you’ll get in-depth answers and consulting assistance from our expert staff. You can ask us questions, bounce ideas off of our researchers, or contact us whenever you need an unbiased third-party perspective.
- Save time. Let us do the research and analysis so that you don’t have to.
- Make better decisions. You’ll be equipped with the latest independent, unbiased, and well-documented research and information.
- Don’t reinvent the wheel. Get access to industry best practices so you don’t make costly mistakes.
We’ll answer your questions related to:
- Online bill-payment channels and tender types
- Web site usability
- E-mail best practices
- Online security
- Mobile Internet
- Microsites, blogs, and newsletters
Gain Access to Your Peer Community and Experts in the Field
We know that your peers are often your best resource. E Source helps you develop that essential peer network through in-person meetings and interactive web conferences.
In-Person Meetings
- Contact Center Roundtable. Every year, E Source brings customer service leaders from across North America together to discuss how to most effectively meet customer service expectations through e-mail communications and the web. The Contact Center Roundtable is a vendor-free zone, designed by and for members of the E Source E-Business Service. The insights and best practices revealed during our rich discussions will arm you with the tools, knowledge, and insights necessary for improving your online customer service.
- E Source Forum. In this exclusive annual event for E Source members, we provide a special topical track devoted to customer service and web site best practices and recommendations.
Topical Web Conferences
Members of the E Source E-Business Service can attend as many service web conferences as they wish without having to pay extra fees. Plus, we archive the conferences on our web site, so if you miss one, you can always watch and listen to it later.
These web conferences allow you to hear from and speak directly with industry leaders on topics that are affecting your web site today. You can see a list of recent E Source E-Business Service web conferences.
Learn Industry Insights from Our Timely Research Reports and Online Utility Web Site Design Center
Using the results from our in-depth web site benchmarking study, E Source develops the interactive “Fantasy Utility Web Site” report with best practice examples of electric and gas utility web pages. You’ll see the most successful features that we found and find out why certain features are so highly rated. Along with this, you’ll be able to refer to our Web Site Design Center, an online tool that provides access to the latest in-depth E Source research about best practices for utility web sites. Specific features include:
- Design guides for all of the features included in the E Source benchmarking study
- The latest adoption-rate data for online self-services, which is drawn from the annual E-Business Metrics Survey
- Case-study reports from utilities that have demonstrated best practices for online self-service
In addition, you’ll get research briefs and other analysis that will show you how to improve your customers’ online experience so you’ll be able focus your attention—and limited resources—on high-impact improvements to your web site. Take a look at what we’ve recently published.
