In this report we share ways to plan at the account and sector levels to set your teams up for successful customer engagements. We used data from the E Source 2021 Account Management Assessment to find out where utilities are succeeding and needing improvement in their account and sector planning.

Utilities’ performance in account and sector planning

Assessment results

Custom strategic account plans focus on individual key accounts in a utility, while strategic sector plans are directed toward streamlining service for SMB customers. The goal of a custom strategic account plan is to create more functional and productive relationships with your key accounts. In the assessment, utilities scored higher in creating and reviewing plans for their key accounts than they did for creating sector plans or using business associations for developing those plans (figure 1).

As shown in figure 1, the tactic “Create strategic sector plans for business customers” scored a 4.0 out of 10.0. To improve on this score, focus on building up your strategic sector plans so your SMB customers have a positive and consistent customer experience.

Recommendations

• Put the key account management department in charge of strategic planning to create consistent communications across all points of contact for the business customer.
• Seek input from customers, business associations, and business advisory panels and align company goals with the customer needs identified through those connections.
• Create custom strategic account plans for your key accounts.
• Create strategic sector plans to inform your entire business customer strategy.

Strategic planning for key accounts

Assessment results

When done correctly, strategic planning helps a utility’s account management group and its key accounts by helping align customer and utility expectations. Account plans are a great way to store important and personalized information for each key account. Fifteen of 19 respondents create a customized strategic account plan for their key accounts (figure 2). Of those that do, most review these plans with utility management annually (figure 3).

As we explain in our report Large business customers’ ratings of their utility and utility representatives, understanding a customer’s business is important: the account rep attribute “Understands the needs and challenges of my business” rated a 9.4 out of 10 in importance among large business customers. Customized strategic account plans should provide the level of detail that key accounts would expect from any provider they work with to understand their business.

Recommendations

Create custom key account plans by:

• Planning for demand
• Providing a predictable experience for your key accounts
• Giving your key accounts a voice in the relationship
• Understanding which programs, products, and services are most important to your key accounts
• Review key account plans with utility management at least annually
• Make sure to create new custom plans for your new key accounts; our report Onboarding and engaging new-service business customers has advice for doing this effectively

The E Source key account plan details how to successfully set up your customized strategic account plans for your key accounts.

Strategic planning for business customer segments or sectors

Assessment results

Each business sector has different energy needs. Creating sector-specific roadmaps allows you to train your account management teams to provide the best customer experience for each industry. This aligns customer and utility expectations. And it creates a streamlined plan for an entire sector rather than a plan for each business customer.

Of the 20 survey respondents, 19 have employees actively participate in business associations. Being a part of business associations educates your employees and provides further insight into the pain points and desires of your business customers.

A business advisory panel is a group of business customers who meet periodically. This type of group helps your utility shape strategic sector plans, develop programs, products, and services, and possibly improve satisfaction scores by developing a deeper understanding of your business customers. Of the eight utilities that create strategic sector plans, only two use input from business advisory panels to guide their strategy (figure 4).

Recommendations

• Show your customers that you care about their business and community by joining business associations and creating advisory panels.
• Actively listen during meetings and take insights from these groups to inform and organize your sector planning.

How to build a strategic sector plan

Creating plans for all of your business customers keeps your account management department organized and sets expectations for the level of service each business customer will receive.

According to the E Source 2021 Small and Midsize Business Customer Satisfaction Study, SMB customers are frustrated when utilities don’t understand the nuances of their business. We saw this in open-end responses in the study:

It is too bad [utility] doesn’t understand it’s customer. If they provided good service, everything else would fall into place.

There are not many rebates and services for dairy farmers.

Sector plans are a way to address this issue. These plans are an informative overview that blends your utility’s regulations and policies with each sector’s needs. They also help utilities serve SMB customers by streamlining service without sacrificing quality for a larger customer group.

As we explain in the report Building and running an ideal account management department, creating a strategic sector plan puts your knowledge into one document to deliver consistent customer interactions, provides business customer intelligence, and advocates for specific sectors.

For the eight utilities that did strategic sector planning in 2021, the sectors that were most likely to have plans were:

• Government
• Education
• Industrial and manufacturing
• Healthcare
• Data centers
• Agribusiness

Your strategic sector plan should define each sector’s expectations of its relationship with your utility. And it should also have strategies for:

• Customer service
• Communications (including outage communications)
• Distributed energy
• Reliability
• Program and service offerings such as energy efficiency and rates

Get started with The E Source strategic sector plan, a thorough guide to sector planning that includes a template you can fill out to develop a plan and customize to your organization’s needs. Also, our report The essentials for segmenting business customers has insights on how to use internal data to strengthen your business marketing strategy.

Once you have strategic sector plans developed for your most important sectors, you can use our Sector snapshots resource center to curate sector-specific energy advice and content for your marketing plan. These snapshots detail, for example, a sector’s energy end uses, energy management initiatives, and most-relevant energy-related technologies and services.