Make a good first impression with self-service moving offerings

First impressions, whether good or bad, can seriously influence how we perceive people, as noted in the National Public Radio article You Had Me At Hello: The Science Behind First Impressions and as we heard from some short interviews with our coworkers (Media 1).

Utility customers’ first impression of their energy provider is the start-service experience. If it’s cumbersome and drawn out, customers could expect that all future interactions with their utility will be similarly unpleasant. Don’t underestimate the power of self-service to surprise customers with how easy it is to check “start electric/natural gas service” off their moving list.

Our three-part report series about self-service options for moving transactions provides utility customer experience and marketing professionals insight into how to empower customers to start, stop, or transfer service on their own, giving customers more freedom and control. This functionality can go a long way toward saving your customers time and reducing their stress during a move. Self-service can also save utilities money because, on a per-transaction basis, it’s less expensive than dedicating a call center representative’s time to scheduling a start-, stop-, or transfer-service order.

Part one of the series—Sizing the Adoption Rate Potential for Self-Service Moving Interactions (available to E Source E-Channel Service customers)—covers the potential customer adoption rate of self-service offerings for moving transactions. Part two (available to E Source E-Channel Service customers)—How to Optimize the Customer Experience of Self-Service Moving Interactions—provides best practices on designing and optimizing the customer experience of self-service moving transactions. Part three (available to E Source Residential Marketing Service customers)—How to Market Your Online Start, Stop, or Transfer Service Offering—guides utilities on how to run with that offering by marketing it to the customer segments most likely to participate. Together, these reports provide the strategic insights that utilities need to drive customers to use self-service channels for moving.