My experience with the utility industry began at an early age.  I was always one of those kids that just couldn’t resist a closer inspection of a down power line.  Growing up, I actually thought power outages were fun and assiduously tracked the progress of repairs – if only because the pace was closely related to the potential of a day off from school. 

Hence, it is with years of “expertise” that I announce I have been appointed this blog’s official commentator on the utility industry.  I’ll give some of my thoughts/observations on the industry, and I thought I’d also turn to you all to hear about your specific challenges and concerns.  Below is what I’ve heard in conversations with utility members over the past couple of years.  Please let me know what’s biggest for you.

What Utilities Are Good At:

Utility companies have not only unique characteristics that warrant targeted discussion, but they’re also lead members on a number of common issues.  Here are a few areas of potential expertise  for utilities:

Issue Management: Utility companies face a variety of local, national, and global issues from construction rights, to regulatory philosophies, to global environmental standards — and “winning” the issue is vital to the organization’s growth and, if publically traded, value.  The utility industry must manage a number of complex alliances and rivals on each side of these issues.

Crisis Management: Storms, kids, power lines – enough said.  Seriously, though, one of our members is working on arming the Communications team with a revolving satellite phone in preparation of a particularly debilitating event.

Customer Service and Communications Integration: Many of our members are taking the lead in customer service initiatives, particularly in various forms of online service (social media or otherwise).   As lines seem to increasingly blur among all forms of communication (whether it’s a call to a service center or a tweet about an outage), more and more of you see opportunity in such Customer Service/Communications partnerships.

How Utilities Are Using CEC:

A couple themes have emerged from recent conversations with those in the utility space.  Primarily, communicators at these companies are realizing that, as much as any industry, utilities are sitting on a vast reservoir of passive supporters – e.g., customers without complaints, employees of significant tenure, communities benefiting from the company’s economic and social service investments.  The goal is: how do we get these stakeholders to be more active in telling our story against the smaller, more vocal group of active detractors?  Specifically, on the employee front, many teams have talked to us about better educating the employee base on the firm’s position on issues requiring public support.

What’s Unique or Hard About Utilities:

A few things that seem to consistently come up:

1)     We’re operate in a regulated but uncompetitive environment

2)     We just became a deregulated utility

3)     We have to manage both at once and have rules about what we can say

4)     We struggle to reach many employees through online channels

5)     We have a conservative culture

6)     Communications is purely a cost center when you have limited competitors

7)     A lot of people hate us

So, what did I get right?  What I get wrong?   What’s missing?  And what are you working on?  Also, I’d love to know what you’re reading so I can keep up with the most influential newsletters, websites, etc. for your industry.

I look forward to sharing what I’m hearing and where I see the applications of our CEC insights.