The E Source Residential Customer Insights Center is an easy-to-use online analysis tool that allows you to gather information about your residential customers’ energy-use patterns and trends, behavior, attitudes toward conservation, program needs, and channel preferences. These insights can inform your strategies for educating customers about programs and services, and they can help you target your customers with the right utility programs using the most appropriate messages delivered via the most effective communication channels.

The data are drawn from the Claritas Energy Behavior Track survey of approximately 32,000 US residential customers, which is typically conducted annually in partnership with E Source but wasn’t done in 2020 due to the pandemic.

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What you get

With the Residential Customer Insights Center, you’ll get information on:

  • Customers’ attitudes and behaviors around conservation and emerging technologies
  • Which customer segments are most likely to participate in your demand-side management programs
  • What customers perceive as barriers and reasons to participate in programs
  • Which appliances, equipment, and technologies customers are using
  • Customer satisfaction and their perceptions of your utility brand
  • Customers’ communication preferences and online interactions

Sample insights from the survey

Utilities have been moving to renewable energy sources and making infrastructure investments to support the transition, but are customers on board with renewables? To find the answer, we looked at data from the Claritas Energy Behavior Track survey. What we found might surprise you. Get more details by reading our blog post How do utility customers really feel about renewable energy?

Methodology

The data are drawn from Claritas Energy Behavior Track annual surveys, conducted in partnership with E Source, in which approximately 32,000 residential customers in the US are surveyed on a variety of energy-related topics. The households were chosen from Survey Sampling International (SSI) and Critical Mix (now Dynata), which are leading providers of survey sampling solutions. SaberEsPoder/Welcome Technologies and InnovateMR were used to recruit harder-to-reach populations in recent years.

Fieldwork quotas were set up for the sample selection of each survey to ensure that the sample was representative of the national population. A post-fieldwork weighting scheme was applied using geographic and demographic data. Demographic inputs included in the weighting process were age, household income, presence of children, and homeownership.

Survey results

How do utility customers really feel about renewable energy? Trends in utility weatherization energy-efficiency programs: Results from the 2017 Claritas Energy Behavior Track What do US customers think of their utility? How do residential customers typically pay their bills? Low-income segmentation: Analyzing diverse customer groups Smart thermostat adoption: What you need to know about your customers Educating US customers about the benefits of HEM

If you’re a subscriber, these links will take you to the study deliverables. If you’re not currently a subscriber, contact us for information on how to become an E Source member.