“The best way I can think of beginning this journey is to make ‘customer-centricity’ the guiding principle. This means leaving the past behind and focusing on the future. It does not mean simply creating a new website or sending frequent text messages to customers. Nor does it mean just engaging in social norming to shape customer behavior. It means changing the culture of the industry, reimagining utilities as service providers, hiring staff with an open mindset and new skills, reaching out to customers to understand their changing needs, and developing new products and services to meet those needs.
This journey will involve finding new ways to engage with customers and observing those customers in real time to understand their energy-buying decisions. Unless these steps are undertaken, the customer is going to leave both the utility and the regulator in the dust.”
— Excerpted by "Refocusing on the Consumer" by Ahmad Faruqui
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2020-03/regv43n1-6.pdf
See also “The reinvention of utilities will be primarily customer-driven” IPPSO FACTO February 2020.