Esteban provided me with the following feedback via email before I did my initial post here on the Hub - his comments are in red:

Utilities Pain Points (Call to Action): 

• Customer Expectations - How to address escalating expectations relating to higher energy prices, greater choice of service, new technology tools, more control, more information?

I think in one or more of these we have to mention AMR/AMI/SMartGrid, because all of these, particularly working together, can make a serious improvement in the customer experience.

• Customer Satisfaction - How to mitigate regulatory intervention through customer satisfaction (i.e. prevent customer complaints)?

I like this one. Let's see how the CE folks react-they spend a lot of time drawing the distinction between CE and customer sat.

• Regulatory Environment - How to preserve positive regulatory environment or improve a less than ideal regulatory environment?
• Financial Performance - How to address increasing pressure from fuel prices, interest rates, and aging infrastructure?

Without the AMR/AMI/Smartgrid, this one feels a little flimsy. Short term, the worst think you can do as a utility is invest. In anything. Longer term, this might play a little better, but ultimately we have to connect CE to financial performance. The case at Dominion was easy because of the previous bullet. The CEàfinancial performance link was nicely made for us by the regulators. I think the wording around this has to be more powerful. Basically, CE for reg utilities has to be about changing customer behaviors such that they consume energy in a way that is more profitable (enter demand response here too)

• Technology - How to address the gap between current state and necessary future state?

This is a problem for sure, but its not as big as culture below or the necessary re-writing of processes. I think the link exists, but the argument is more powerful by joining the process and technology aspects, even if starts anew the holy war over which comes first...

• Cultural - How are the "unwritten rules" of our corporate culture impacting performance?

Conclusion:  Customer experience is a key component of all of the pain points listed above; therefore Utilities must develop a Customer Experience vision and strategy that will align with their business performance goals.

BSG Alliance is the leader in delivering Customer Experience Vision and Strategy which consists of*:

• Assessing current customer experience processes and capabilities
• Designing and conducting detailed customer research

In service of what? What is the value?

• Developing hypothetical descriptions of different types of customers and identifying the most influential

Hypothetical descriptions sounds a little weak. I imagine you are referring to personae. (Complex psycho-demographic profiles of how customers really "feel"?-these are the wrong words too... but I don't like "description" that much

• Developing Experience Profiles that describe the key customer outcomes and experiences to be delivered in each customer situation
• Developing Experience Scenarios to describe how these outcomes and experiences come together over time to shape the customer's overall experience
• Create recommended sequencing of actions impacting the customers' experience
• Assessing the employee experience, and its affect on the customers' experience

The key missing piece here is the economic model of the customer-all of this is done to preserve and enhance the profitability of each customer. Not sure that this list is very different from the last list below, which feels a little more succinct and high-level

Benefits:

• 4 Tactical: Guide near-term improvements and communications that will:
• v Streamline operations and routine transaction processing from the customer experience perspective.
• v Increase value to customers
• v Minimize adverse customer reactions by communication from the customer's perspective
• 4 Strategic: Develop long-term vision for a differentiated and compelling experience that provides a:
• v Rigorous basis for making investments that improve the economics of customer relationships
• v Means of protecting the favorable regulatory environment
• v Basis for prioritizing and aligning specific near-term initiatives
• v Alignment of the employee experience with desired changes in the customer experience
• v Fundamentally different and more innovative approach for a regulated utility to operate

We use these (above) a lot, and I think they are good, but they are not well-tested beyond Dominion

BSG Alliance's Customer Experience Approach (or methodology):  

• Define Customer Experience Vision, Strategies & Segments
• v Define Customer Segments (Personae/Profiles) & Economic Model
• v Create the Consumer Experience Design & Operating Model Implications
• v Create the Employee Experience Design & Workforce Implications
• v Prove the Concept, Implementation Planning (Roadmap) & Roll-Out