Personalizing the customer experience is mission-critical to any utility customer experience. By its very definition, full personalization is all encompassing—comprising all departments, all offers, all channels, and all customers. But with limited or over-booked IT resources, siloed and antiquated systems, and variable data quality, this impossible to accomplish right away. So how do you even get started with personalization? 

Uplight has found a way to get started and see immediate results without boiling the ocean. From our experience and our work with utilities like National Grid, we have developed the 1-2-10 plan for kicking off a personalized utility—consisting of one business objective, two channels, and ten offers. Once a utility starts with their own version of 1-2-10, they can easily scale up to their full vision of personalization.

Select ONE business objective

Focus on a business objective where personalization can deliver value quickly. This can be to reduce contact center repeat calls, engage customers in a new TOU rate, or ensure that low income customers are enrolled in the most beneficial offer. Don’t be tempted to do too much here–you want to see clear results fast. 

Choose TWO delivery channels to engage customers

Focus on the two channels most of your customers from the identified business objective participate in. For low-income customers, this will primarily be the contact center and either email or text. If the business objective is to engage early adopters in a new energy storage program, then the right channels may be in-home devices or an app. It’s important to engage your customers where they are.

Get started with a set of 10 offers

Once your business objective and delivery channels have been selected, focus on identifying ten possible customer offers, programs, products or messages that address your business

challenge and, ideally, also benefit multiple business units across your utility. Utilities might offer a levelized bill, payment assistance, or a free energy efficiency home audit for low-income customers. This ensures that the benefits of the new, personalized utility are felt across the organization and customers have more reasons to return and engage with the utility.

Personalization doesn’t have to be daunting. By starting with one business objective, two delivery channels, and 10 offers, utilities can get started right away and immediately see results. Then utilities can continue to expand by adding more business objectives, channels, and offers to realize the full personalization vision. Download our eBook, Creating the Personalized Utility, for more best practices.