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At a time of economic downturn, utilities are faced with pressures to lower costs, protect revenues, and lower customer payment arrearage. However, you still have to maintain or grow customer satisfaction and meet regulatory goals.
E Source is an ideal partner for improving your operational efficiencies and enhancing value to your customers. Your E Source membership is the essential tool you need to fulfill your business goals:
- Meet your demand-side management and program implementation goals,
- Lower customer care costs, and
- Exceed your customer satisfaction targets.
Faced with today’s new economic challenges, you may be considering working toward your goals on your own, hiring a consultant, or maintaining an E Source membership. Take a few minutes to weigh the risks and consider the true cost of these options:
Risks of Doing It Yourself
- Downtime and program delays if your staff gets sick, takes vacation, or requires training.
- Higher costs if you plan on hiring staff—don’t forget to factor in fully loaded rates (for example, benefits and overhead for office space).
- Costly mistakes from not knowing what others in the industry have tried and what lessons they’ve learned.
- Missed program goals from not understanding the latest trends in program design or in relevant technologies and from not knowing which options to embrace or avoid.
Risks of Hiring a Consultant or Outside Contractor
- Higher costs, because you’re getting charged by the hour.
- Loss of essential knowledge—when the consultant leaves, so does the expertise.
- No benefit to your staff because access to these high-priced experts is usually limited to high-level managers.
Risks of Having an E Source Membership
- Getting it done right the first time with insights from our best-practice case studies and in-depth research.
- Accelerated program implementation with the help of our ready-to-use tools and analysis.
- Timely answers to questions from your entire staff through our Member Inquiry Service.
- Increased knowledge base—your staff will have ongoing access to over 40 industry experts with more than 500 years of experience in utility demand-side management, call centers, customer-based market research, marketing, and technologies.
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