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Utility Marketing- Numbers Games, Technology Wars or Relational Marketing?
Abstract
Natural gas and electric utilities seem to be feverishly
interested in expanding their business base, improving
consumption load factors while attempting to preserve
their customers' profitability. They have turned to
technology for weapons in their battle, niche marketing in
their plan and competitive selling in their posture. But
are they missing the big picture? Where is the customer
in all this? Does the customer see this as competition,
service or a circus? Does current utility marketing
thinking strengthen or weaken the customer-utility
relationship?
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how utilities can
market more effectively. With examples drawn from our
experience serving 58 electric utilities across the United
States, we will illustrate the guiding principles and
potential traps in competitive marketing and customer
service. Our conclusions indicate that most current
marketing efforts are unbalanced, unfairly reward luck,
are wasteful and counterproductive. We believe marketing
must move from a technology-based, "silver bullet'
competition, frenetic non-competitive load retention
dissipation and load-claiming game, to a relational-based
marketing posture in which absolute integrity, service and
their consequent trust become paramount.
We believe utilities need to build honest relationships with
all their customers, not merely their energy purchasers.
These include their fuel suppliers and regulators. When a
utility is not trusted, the competitive situation is reduced
to that of a commodity supplier in which price and terms
constitute the whole of the relationship. Utilities reduced
to this level of inadequate customer service ultimately will
lose to those that recognize the alternative of adding
value. As the nature and consequences of competition
increase, the importance of breaking from the methods of
the past.
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Citation
Gilbert, J. S. (1988). Utility Marketing- Numbers Games, Technology Wars or Relational Marketing?. Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.eslwin.tamu.edu). Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /92365.