Creating Meaningful Push Alerts: What do Utility Customers Care About?

April 8, 2021

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Did you know that according to a study from Adobe and Forrester Consulting, customer-focused companies increase their revenue 1.4 times faster than non-customer-focused companies?

In fact, even utility providers who traditionally have no market competition can still boost their profitability by providing an excellent customer experience (CX) and world-class customer engagement

For utility providers to achieve this, it’s crucial that they optimize the opportunities that customer-facing technologies bring. One such tool that is driving customer engagement across a wide number of industries is customer push notifications and alerts.

In this blog, we look at what exactly push notifications and alerts are, how you should use them to send valuable information to your customers and how they can be delivered through a seamless utility customer portal

What are Notifications and Alerts?

Push notifications and alerts are clickable pop-up messages that are sent directly to a utility customer through a utility mobile application or their browser. They are marketing tools that enable your utility to send valuable and relevant information directly to your customer’s phone or desktop, improving how your utility engages with customers.

Not only is this a fantastic way to improve your utility’s customer experience, it can also save your customer service department time and money by giving your business the ability to send instant, automated and direct communications straight to your customer. 

What Notifications do Utility Customers Want to Receive?

Push notifications are highly-effective at improving utility customer engagement and driving up customer satisfaction levels, but at the same time it’s crucial that they are used responsibly and strategically. 

For truly effective push notifications, your utility needs to strike a balance between the right information and the right frequency of communication. Going overboard with push alerts and sending information that your customers do not care about will only lead to your alerts being ignored or muted. 

So, with that in mind, SilverBlaze takes a look at some of the top utility features that utility customers want to receive push notifications and alerts about. These are just a few of the key topics in which you can use push alerts to truly transform your customer experience:

eBilling

Rather than sending a paper bill to your customer each month, why not improve the customer experience through an eBilling solution that puts your customers needs first. Inform your customers when it’s time for them to pay their bill, and provide a seamless experience for them to make the payment. Not only will your customer be satisfied with the service your utility is offering, your business will improve its cash flow at the same time by collecting payments faster.

Customer usage and analytics

Provide real-time usage and consumption analytics that help your customers meet their utility usage goals. For example, notifying customers when they are exceeding their daily, weekly or monthly usage goals gives customers the information they need to make informed decisions that help them to save money and live a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle.

Outage notifications

It doesn’t matter what utility business you are running, whether it’s electric, water and sewer, natural gas, telecom or multi-service utilities, not one single customer likes losing access to their utility. However, saying that, utility downtime is inevitable. To ease the pain during outages, providing your customers with push notifications that inform them exactly why the outage is occurring and its estimated restoration time will revolutionize your utility’s CX offering.

Deliver Notifications and Alerts with a Seamless Customer Portal Solution

Interested in providing your customers with push notification and alerts? There’s no better way to do it than through the award-winning SilverBlaze Customer Portal for Utilities – a comprehensive web platform and mobile application that provides your utility customers with a seamless experience.

Using The SilverBlaze Customer Portal, utility customers can access important utility information, such as eBilling, utility usage, consumption tracking, account information and much more. 

On top of that, our innovative technology also provides utility providers with the option to send personalized push notifications and alerts to instantly notify customers with the information they want to receive, when they want to receive it. 

Want to learn more about how push notifications and alerts, combined with a seamless customer portal designed specifically for utility providers, can transform your utility’s customer experience offering? Get in touch with the SilverBlaze team today.

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It’s time to stop worrying about all the issues that come with low customer engagement, and instead, transform your operations to become the leading utility company in your area.

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