BY BLUERUSH | PERSONALIZED VIDEO

Like any other business, utility companies are always looking for ways to increase revenues and save time without breaking the bank or overcommitting resources.

Too often, however, efficient streamlining solutions come at the expense of customer service and customer experience. But what if you didn’t have to sacrifice the customer to streamline your strategies?

This question matters even more at a time when consumer preferences are shifting rapidly. People now expect more and better digital solutions as part of the customer experience, and so the tools to address these expectations are shifting too.

Like many other sectors, the utilities industry is moving away from its old “call center” culture, having become increasingly expensive for businesses and more frustrating for customers. The costs of training call staff are up and so are the wait times, locking businesses in a lose-lose race to the bottom.

Too often, customers feel ignored by call agents, unappreciated by companies, or bewildered by a lack of clear, easily accessible information – a bad situation made worse in the utilities industry because of the sheer necessity of energy. Regardless of cause, however, a disappointing experience will have them vocal about their less-than-favorable opinion, hurting your reputation and bottom-line.

As we’ll see, interactive personalized video (IPV) is at the cutting edge of marketing, a simple but powerful tool that lets utility companies achieve that rarest of trifectas – increased revenues, streamlined processes, and better relationships with end customers.

No more bore: evolving the self-serve model with personalized video

Whether through frustrating processes or simply the lack of answers, customers often encounter roadblocks when they need information.

So how do you move customers to a self-serve model that supplies them with the information they need to understand and manage their energy use?

Customer journeys are made easier when they can access – at a time and channel of their choosing – a knowledge base that answers their common questions. Tweaking your self-service processes like this, in ways that don’t forsake customer experience for cost, nurtures customer loyalty by making them central to your service and giving them the customer experience they now expect.

Here to help evolve the self-serve model and meet these expectations is BlueRush’s Next Gen Video Platform that lets you create engaging videos to provide your customers with the valuable information they’re looking for by leveraging data to personalize each video.

Take, for example, billing statements. Standard-issue utilities billing statements often come with rows of unexplained numbers or dull fine-print explanations. Statements like this do little to inspire a customer to truly take charge and manage their energy use. More likely, the statement, whether in paper or email format, forever stays closed.

Billing statements, on the other hand, come alive with personalized video, driven by and incorporating customer data that engages your customers and drives them to action. Here is a demo for a utility statement that shows you exactly how personalized videos can transform bills and invoices into multimedia tools that speak directly to customers and boost engagement.

And because they can be scripted to include a variety of text, images, and data, personalized video can be specifically adapted to utilities issues, whether enabling customers to easily understand seasonal fluctuations in their utility bills or walking them through the benefits of smart metering and how it affects their own usage.

Exploring other uses – like having the viewer virtually experience a product or service by simulating different offers or alternate scenarios – opens up endless possibilities of improving your CX and placing the customer at the heart of utilities.

The lightbulb moment: why utilities focus on personalized video

Deploying personalized video to design and nurture a better customer experience in utilities is premised on the unparalleled power of video to inform, engage, and drive to action.

Video continues to be the format of choice for companies to market to and communicate with customers because it takes visuals, sound, and text and combines them with video and voice-overs, all in a way that is both educational and entertaining.

And the power of the video is exponentially boosted when the content is personalized. Placing the user at the center of the narrative makes the communication richer: the information holds their attention and is easier to remember. It is this narrative involvement that gives personalized video higher engagement and retention rates than other forms communications.

This is even more so for interactive personalized videos, which involve active participation. With our revolutionary Living Video functionalities, videos can also be interactive, answering customer questions in real time and right from the player.

Supercharged: New solutions for new kinds of customers

Old solutions are dying out as consumer behavior evolves, and one way to keep up with the exponential growth of digital channels is to have the tools to meet the expectations of an elevated customer experience.

Whether used for interactive billing or explaining smart metering, interactive personalized video help utility companies easily build and scale up exceptional personalized interactions that satisfy customer needs in an engaging format they prefer.

High retention rates, increased ROI, happier customers. As utilities continue to digitize, personalized video can be an extraordinarily effective strategy that lets the utilities industry better serve customers.